Trump was the only candidate who during his election campaign was against neoliberal
globalization as well as against neoliberal wars for the expansion of US-led global neoliberal empire (but also only until he was
elected)
During elections he looked like the best chance to prevent military confrontation with Russia in Syria and the risk of WWIII.
After elections he looks quote opposite experiencing political metamorphose similar to Obama who
became Bush II in foreign policy in just 100 days: another masterful "bait and
switch maneuver"
The last time America saw a strong paleo-conservative was
Pat Buchanan in 1996. An early win in Louisiana caused Buchanan to place second in Iowa and first
in New Hampshire. Lacking money, Buchanan was steamrolled by the establishment in Arizona and, in terms
of paleo-conservatism, many thought he was the Last of the Mohicans. Trump's campaign is Buchananesque
with one difference: Trump has money... -- by Joseph R. Murray II
(Orlando Sentinel, Aug 12, 2015)
"There is one political party in this country, and that is the party of money.
It has two branches, the Republicans and the Democrats, the chief difference between which is
that the Democrats are better at concealing their scorn for the average man."
-- Gore Vidal
“The Democrats are the foxes, and the Republicans are the wolves – and they both want to
devour you.” So what does that make Libertarians? Avian flu viruses?”
-- Leonard Pinkney
The race is no contest when you own both horses. That is why no matter which political party
is in power nothing really changes other than the packaging. The puppets who drink at the champagne
fountains of the powerful do the bidding of their masters. The people are superfluous to the process.
In the “democracy” that America has evolved to, money counts more than people.
In past elections, the votes were counted, now they are going to start weighing them.
“(T)he rich elites of (the USA) have far more in common with their counterparts in London,
Paris, and Tokyo than with their fellow American citizens … the rich disconnect themselves
from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place
to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and
ruling it, but not of it.”
-- Mike Lofgren
Note: On April 6, 2016 Trump surrendered to neocons. Events after
April 6, 2017 are discussed at Trump
after his Colin Powell moment.The election image of Trump
(like in case of king of "bait and switch" Obama it proved to be false) -- he easily
betrayed his election promises
Note: this article was written long before the election as as such does not reflect
subsequent events such as Trump attack on Syria.
Both choices in US Presidential election 2016 were dismal, but they are unequal in their gravity options.
All this blabbering about Trump future appointment of "wrong" (aka reactionary) Supreme Court justices,
slashing taxes for rich, elimination of inheritance tax, and other similar things make sense if
and only if the country continues to exist. Which is not given due to the craziness and the level of
degeneration of neoliberal elite, especially neocons that infest Washington, DC, Obama administration (including
Obama himself), as well as "bloodthrusty" democrats like Hillary (“no fly zone in Syria” is one example of her craziness).
While formally neocons are aligned with Republican party, they feel at home at Democratic Party too as
it became the second War Party in Washington. And war (cold or hot are OK, as long as neocons personally do not need to fight
in the trenches and somebody else need to die in wars of neoliberal empire expansion) is all they
want. Neocons are, in essence, MIC lobbyists. Playing chicken with a nuclear power for the sake of
providing MIC with outside profits and maintaining the US global dominance is a crazy policy that
exhausts country resources, and impoverish population, like previously was the case with British and Spanish empires.
Neocons rule the roost in both parties, which essentially became a single War Party with two
wings. They completely appropriated formulation of the US foreign policy and dominate the State
Department and Pentagon. In this sense Trump is a real outlier (or was, before he was elected).
Simplified his foreign policy platform includes two simple and very attractive for the US population
slogan, that are completely opposite to Washington official foreign policy doctrine, enforced by
"deep state"
F*ck neocons and their wars of neoliberal empire expansion. That is probably the most
important part the meaning of his famous slogan "America first" borrowed for
paleoconservatives.
F*ck globalization. This is the second part of the meaning of his slogan "America
first".
So the hissy fit the deep state displayed before December 19 (classic "Russians are under
every bed" hysteria, supported by all neoliberal MSM, including WaPo, NYT, CNN, ABC, MSBNC, etc) was
not about Russia, it was about the danger that the current neocon-driven foreign policy that was a
hallmark of the US forign policy during the last four administrations (Bush I, Clinton, Bush
II and Obama) will be abandoned by Trump administration.
The fact the American people discarded Hillary Clinton is encouraging. As a neocon
warmonger she belongs to the dust bin of history. But
as it is not clear whether Trump is capable to deliver his key foreign policy promises/objectives, such a
detente with Russia, and no new wars of neoliberal empire expansion. Deep state is way too strong
for a single maverick, or even a group of like minded mavericks change the US foreign policy.
Even if they have unconditional support of US military (as
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard demonstrated with her recent bill):
The chances are high that Trump he will be co-opted by
Washington neocons and gradually will became Bush IV or Obama II. That will be really
unfortunate development. In this chess game, Trump having weaker figures and position in
labyrinth of power will need to find new people ready to go and skillfully navigate
around the neocon swamp and MIC land mines. The only countervailing force are US military, who are
fighting all those neocon wars and who really hate neocon chickenhawks, and know their real price. Separately, Trump has
suggested a new rules prohibiting lobbying
for five years after service in his administration and total prohibition of being lobbyist of
foreign states. That is really revolutionary and this alone make Trump distinct from a typical
Washington politicians. But those parasites will definitely fiercely resists such sensitive for
their family budget change.
Trump looks like the only chance somewhat to limit their influence and reach some détente with Russia.
And I would not be surprised one bit if Dick Cheney, Victoria Nuland, Paul Wolfowitz and Perle voted
for Hillary. Robert Kagan and papa Bush publicly declared such an intention. And the fact Hillary is a
staunch neocon, and always was. A wolf in sheep clothing,
if we are talking about real anti-war democrats, not the USA brand of DemoRats. She is a crazy warmonger,
no question about it, trying to compensate a complete lack of diplomatic skills with jingoism and saber
rattling. In foreign policy area she was John McCain in pantsuit. Here is one interesting quote (
nakedcapitalism.com )
“What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the generals
and the admirals that she is a ‘tough bitch’, ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate to pull
the trigger. An illuminating article in the
NY Times revealed that she always advocates the most muscular and reckless dispositions
of U.S. military forces whenever her opinion is solicited. ”
But it looks that many people in the USA were able to understand that the choice in this particular
case was between the decimation of the last remnants of the New Deal and a real chance of WWIII. Those
are two events of completely difference magnitude: one is reversible (and please note that Trump is
bound by very controversial obligations to his electorate and faces hostile Congress), the other is
not.
Neoliberalism after 2008 entered zombie state so while it is still strong aggressive and bloodthirsty
it might not last for long. And in such cases the defeat of democratic forces on domestic front is temporary.
That means vote against Hillary.
Bottom line: The use of military power since 2001 has:
Turned a previously whole and regionally impotent Iraq that balanced
Iran into a factory of terrorism and a client of Tehran;
Turned Afghanistan from a country with a two-sided civil war—contained
within its own borders—into a dysfunctional state that serves as a magnet for terrorists.
Turned a Libya that suffered internal unrest, but didn’t threaten
its neighbors or harbor terrorists, into an “unmitigated failure” featuring a raging civil war,
serving as an African beachhead for ISIS and a terrorist breeding ground;
Contributed to the expansion of al-Qaeda into a “franchise” group,
spawned a new strain when ISIS was born out of the vacuum created by our Iraq invasion, and seen
majorterrorist threats explode worldwide;
Joined other nations in battles in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and
other areas within Africa whose only result has been the expansion of the threat and the deepening
of the suffering of the civil populations.
These continued and deepening failures kill unknown numbers of innocent civilians each year, intensify
and spread the
hatred many have of America, and incrementally weaken our national security. But these military
failures have another, less obvious but more troubling cost.
With the exception of Iran, which for some reason he hates so much, that he wants to risk a war with
it, Trump speaks more like a paleoconservative
then a neocon.
He is more reasonable as for US-Russian relation that bloodthirsty warmonger Hillary (which is an easy
task because "this woman"
wet kiss neocons all the time).
His focus in relations with China, while also hawkish in more
about trade balance and "bringing jobs home" issues, not so much about South Sea military adventures (U.S.-China
Trade Reform Donald J Trump for President):
How We Got Here: Washington Politicians Let China Off The Hook
In January 2000, President Bill Clinton boldly promised China’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization
(WTO) “is a good deal for America. Our products will gain better access to China’s market, and every
sector from agriculture, to telecommunications, to automobiles. But China gains no new market access
to the United States.” None of what President Clinton promised came true. Since China joined the
WTO, Americans have witnessed the closure of more than 50,000 factories and the loss of tens of millions
of jobs. It was not a good deal for America then and it’s a bad deal now. It is a typical example
of how politicians in Washington have failed our country.
The most important component of our China policy is leadership and strength at the negotiating
table. We have been too afraid to protect and advance American interests and to challenge China to
live up to its obligations. We need smart negotiators who will serve the interests of American workers
– not Wall Street insiders that want to move U.S. manufacturing and investment offshore.
The Goal Of The Trump Plan: Fighting For American Businesses And Workers
America has always been a trading nation. Under the Trump administration trade will flourish.
However, for free trade to bring prosperity to America, it must also be fair trade. Our goal is not
protectionism but accountability. America fully opened its markets to China but China has not reciprocated.
Its Great Wall of Protectionism uses unlawful tariff and non-tariff barriers to keep American companies
out of China and to tilt the playing field in their favor.
If you give American workers a level playing field, they will win. At its heart, this plan is
a negotiating strategy to bring fairness to our trade with China. The results will be huge for American
businesses and workers. Jobs and factories will stop moving offshore and instead stay here at home.
The economy will boom. The steps outlined in this plan will make that a reality.
When Donald J. Trump is president, China will be on notice that America is back in the global
leadership business and that their days of currency manipulation and cheating are over. We will cut
a better deal with China that helps American businesses and workers compete.
The Trump Plan Will Achieve The Following Goals:
Bring China to the bargaining table by immediately declaring it a currency
manipulator.
Protect American ingenuity and investment by forcing China to uphold intellectual
property laws and stop their unfair and unlawful practice of forcing U.S. companies to share proprietary
technology with Chinese competitors as a condition of entry to China’s market.
Reclaim millions of American jobs and reviving American manufacturing by
putting an end to China’s illegal export subsidies and lax labor and environmental standards.
No more sweatshops or pollution havens stealing jobs from American workers.
Strengthen our negotiating position by lowering our corporate tax rate to
keep American companies and jobs here at home, attacking our debt and deficit so China cannot
use financial blackmail against us, and bolstering the U.S. military presence in the East and
South China Seas to discourage Chinese adventurism.
Details of Donald J. Trump’s US China Trade Plan:
Declare China A Currency Manipulator
We need a president who will not succumb to the financial blackmail of a Communist dictatorship.
President Obama’s Treasury Department has repeatedly refused to brand China a currency manipulator
– a move that would force China to stop these unfair practices or face tough countervailing duties
that level the playing field.
Economists estimate the Chinese yuan is undervalued by anywhere from 15% to 40%. This grossly
undervalued yuan gives Chinese exporters a huge advantage while imposing the equivalent of a heavy
tariff on U.S. exports to China. Such currency manipulation, in concert with China’s other unfair
practices, has resulted in chronic U.S. trade deficits, a severe weakening of the U.S. manufacturing
base and the loss of tens of millions of American jobs.
In a system of truly free trade and floating exchange rates like a Trump administration would
support, America's massive trade deficit with China would not persist. On day one of the Trump
administration the U.S. Treasury Department will designate China as a currency manipulator. This
will begin a process that imposes appropriate countervailing duties on artificially cheap Chinese
products, defends U.S. manufacturers and workers, and revitalizes job growth in America. We must
stand up to China’s blackmail and reject corporate America’s manipulation of our politicians.
The U.S. Treasury’s designation of China as a currency manipulator will force China to the negotiating
table and open the door to a fair – and far better – trading relationship.
End China’s Intellectual Property Violations
China’s ongoing theft of intellectual property may be the greatest transfer of wealth in history.
This theft costs the U.S. over $300 billion and millions of jobs each year. China’s government
ignores this rampant cybercrime and, in other cases, actively encourages or even sponsors it –without
any real consequences. China’s cyber lawlessness threatens our prosperity, privacy and national
security. We will enforce stronger protections against Chinese hackers and counterfeit goods and
our responses to Chinese theft will be swift, robust, and unequivocal.
The Chinese government also forces American companies like Boeing, GE, and Intel to transfer
proprietary technologies to Chinese competitors as a condition of entry into the Chinese market.
Such de facto intellectual property theft represents a brazen violation of WTO and international
rules. China’s forced technology transfer policy is absolutely ridiculous. Going forward, we will
adopt a zero tolerance policy on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer. If
China wants to trade with America, they must agree to stop stealing and to play by the rules.
Eliminate China’s Illegal Export Subsidies And Other Unfair Advantages
Chinese manufacturers and other exporters receive numerous illegal export subsidies from the
Chinese government. These include - in direct contradiction to WTO rules - free or nearly free
rent, utilities, raw materials, and many other services. China’s state-run banks routinely extend
loans these enterprises at below market rates or without the expectation they will be repaid.
China even offers them illegal tax breaks or rebates as well as cash bonuses to stimulate exports.
China’s illegal export subsidies intentionally distorts international trade and damages other
countries’ exports by giving Chinese companies an unfair advantage. From textile and steel mills
in the Carolinas to the Gulf Coast’s shrimp and fish industries to the Midwest manufacturing belt
and California’s agribusiness, China’s disregard for WTO rules hurt every corner of America.
The U.S. Trade Representative recently filed yet another complaint with the WTO accusing China
of cheating on our trade agreements by subsidizing its exports. The Trump administration will
not wait for an international body to tell us what we already know. To gain negotiating leverage,
we will pursue the WTO case and aggressively highlight and expose these subsidies.
China’s woeful lack of reasonable environmental and labor standards represent yet another form
of unacceptable export subsidy. How can American manufacturers, who must meet very high standards,
possibly compete with Chinese companies that care nothing about their workers or the environment?
We will challenge China to join the 21 st Century when it comes to such standards.
The Trump Plan Will Strengthen Our Negotiating Position
As the world’s most important economy and consumer of goods, America must always negotiate
trade agreements from strength. Branding China as a currency manipulator and exposing their unfair
trade practices is not enough. In order to further strengthen our negotiating leverage, the Trump
plan will:
Lower the corporate tax rate to 15% to unleash American ingenuity here
at home and make us more globally competitive. This tax cut puts our rate 10 percentage points
below China and 20 points below our current burdensome rate that pushes companies and jobs
offshore.
Attack our debt and deficit by vigorously eliminating waste, fraud and
abuse in the Federal government, ending redundant government programs, and growing the economy
to increase tax revenues. Closing the deficit and reducing our debt will mean China cannot
blackmail us with our own Treasury bonds.
Strengthen the U.S. military and deploying it appropriately in the East and South
China Seas. These actions will discourage Chinese adventurism that imperils American
interests in Asia and shows our strength as we begin renegotiating our trading relationship
with China. A strong military presence will be a clear signal to China and other nations in
Asia and around the world that America is back in the global leadership business.
And his views on relations with Russia and China, regime change wars, and imperial overreach,
as best they can be ascertained, are a lot wiser and less lethal than hers. These are not so
much left-right issues as matters of common sense.
Clinton’s overriding concern was and always has been to maintain and expand American world domination
— in the face of economic decline, and at no matter what cost. Trump wants, or says he wants,
to do business with other countries in the way that he did with sleaze ball real estate moguls and
network executives, people like himself. He wants to make deals.
The Trump way is, as they say, “transactional.” The idea is to wheel and deal on a case-by-case
basis, with no further, non-pecuniary end in view.
... ... ...
Better that, though, than a foreign policy dedicated to keeping America the world’s hegemon. That
is the foreign policy establishment’s aim; it is therefore Clinton’s too. It is the way of perpetual
war. Trump’s way is far from ideal, but it is less wasteful, less onerous and less reckless.
During the campaign, Trump would sometimes speak out against banksters and financiers, especially
the too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-jail kind. For some time, though, the “populist” billionaire has
been signaling to his class brothers and sisters in the financial “industry” that he is more likely
to deregulate than to regulate their machinations.
This will become even clearer once Trump settles on key Cabinet posts and on his economic advisors.
It is already plain, though, that the modern day counterparts of Theodore Roosevelt’s “malefactors
of great wealth” have little to fear; they and Trump are joined by indissoluble bonds of class-consciousness
and solidarity.
Many of the rich and heinous were skeptical of Trump’s candidacy at first; because he is such
a loose cannon. But now that he has won, the bastards are sucking up; and glee is returning to Wall
Street.
Trump is now starting too to allay the fears of the movers and shakers of the National Security
State. He still has a way to go, however. We can therefore still hope that they are right to worry.
What is bad for them is good for the country.
Clinton’s defeat also seems to have unnerved their counterparts in European capitals, at NATO headquarters
in Brussels, and in Japan, South Korea and other countries where the presence of the American military
has been very very good for the few at the top, and disastrous for ordinary people.
If he means it, then more power to him. The United States and the rest of the world would be well
rid of the American dominated military alliances now in place; NATO most of all. However, having
talked with him, Obama is now telling the Europeans that Trump is fine with NATO. Time will tell.
Then there is Israel. Trump thinks that the blank check the ethnocratic settler state already gets
from the United States isn’t nearly enough. So much for allies paying their own way!
However, even if Trump leaves America’s perpetual war regime and its military alliances intact, some
good could come just from him being at the helm – not so much because, as a wheeler and dealer, he
would be less inclined actually to start wars than has become the norm, but because he is vile enough,
and enough of an embarrassment, to undermine America’s prestige, hastening the day when the hegemon
is a hegemon no more.
This would be good for most Americans, and good for the world.
The election he won has already done a lot to explode the idea, more widely believed at home than
abroad, that American “democracy” is somehow a model for the world.
"The Democrats consider their views to be the ultimate truth. It is impossible to reach any
agreement with them in this respect. They are not focused on national interests, but rather on
globalist goals and universal human values. In this sense the ability of Obama's team to reach
deals has passed into legend," he said. "In recent years, Russia has not tried to engage in
meaningful diplomacy with the Obama administration since it was useless."
But negotiation will be tough because Trump explicit position is to seek advantages for the USA,
not equal deals. He might possibly cooperate on tackling Daesh in Syria. If so, this will mark a major
departure from Russia's relations with the US under the Obama administration in recent years. But
the problem is the Congress which is infected with war hawks (mostly chickenhawks).
Real Trump position on Russia would be more clear when he selects his candidate for the Secretary
of State. So far his views were encouraging: he is not in favor of direct confrontation that Obama
administration pursued and Clinton administration would probably convert into armed conflict. Here are some additional details from Russophobic Guardian presstitute Shawn Walker (The
Guardian, July 7, 2016):
Page, an investment banker who previously worked in Russia, insisted he was in
Russia on a private visit,
although he is likely to meet Russian officials when he gives the commencement speech at the New
Economic School in Moscow on Friday. He refused to comment on whether he had any meetings with officials
planned.
The presumptive Republican nominee has expressed his confidence that he would build a good relationship
with the Russian president
telling reporters last year: “I think I would get along very well with Vladimir Putin.”
He
also defended the Russian leader against accusations that Putin has ordered the killing of journalists,
telling ABC News “In all fairness to Putin, you’re saying he killed people. I haven’t seen that.
I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that? Do you know the names of the reporters
that he’s killed? Because I’ve been – you know, you’ve been hearing this, but I haven’t seen the
names,”
The announced topic of Page’s discussion was “the evolution of the world economy”, but much of
it involved semi-coherent analysis of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
In passing, Page castigated the US for interfering in the internal affairs of other countries
and pursuing "regime change" in former Soviet countries. He said Russia and the US could have better
relations in future, but this would be “contingent upon US’s refocus toward resolution of domestic
challenges”. However, when pressed on details he was evasive.
In March, Page told Bloomberg that his experience on the ground doing deals in Russia and Central
Asia would make him better placed to give advice than “people from afar, sitting in the comfort of
their think tanks in Washington”. It is unclear how close he is to Trump and how much weight his
advice holds with the presidential candidate.
Page repeatedly emphasised that he was in Russia as a private citizen rather than as an emissary
of Trump. However, it is connections with the presidential candidate which prompted the New Economic
School to invite him to give their keynote annual speech. In previous years, the commencement speeches
at the university have been given by high-profile figures, including Barack Obama in 2009.
In December, Putin referred to Trump as a “colourful” person who was the “absolute leader” of
the US presidential race, comments which prompted Trump to respond in turn that he was flattered
by the praise. “When people call you brilliant, it’s always good, especially when the person heads
up Russia,” Trump said, adding incorrectly that Putin had called him a “genius”.
Last month, Putin
clarified the comments, saying he had not endorsed Trump, but welcomed his stance on relations
with Russia.
“Here’s where I will pay close attention, and where I exactly welcome and where on the contrary
I don’t see anything bad: Mr Trump has declared that he’s ready for the full restoration of Russian-American
relations. Is there anything bad there? We all welcome this, don’t you?”
Trump declared the Obama nuclear deal, the deal which helped to
keep oil prices very low since mid 2014, "disastrous" and suggested it would be one of the first
arrangements he would "renegotiate" after he assumes the office of the presidency in January, 2017.
"They are laughing
at the stupidity of the deal we’re making on nuclear," Trump
said of the Iranians, in an interview last summer with CNN. "We should double up and triple
up the sanctions and have them come to us. They are making an amazing deal."
It is unlear why he calls this stupidity. IMHO this was a very
shrewd move, then decimated Russia economic, as Russia budget depends of world prices and also
heavily hit KAS, Venezuela and other oil producing nations. Putting some of them on the wedge of
bankruptcy. In American Conservative
Daniel Larison gave very insightful overview of
Trump position, which is shared by his close advisors such as General Flynn (Trump
and Iran The American Conservative):
Scott McConnell
asks what we could expect from Trump on foreign policy, specifically on Iran:
The greater neoconservative goal, of course, is the prevention any American
rapprochement with Iran, keeping the sanctions going till they have a president
willing to start a war on the country. How does Trump fit into that?
I have tried to avoid writing about Trump as much as possible over the last few
months, because it is generally a waste of time to attempt to analyze the policy views
of an opportunistic demagogue, but since the question has been asked here I’ll try to
answer it.
As far as I can tell, Trump endorses the hard-liners’ position on the
nuclear deal. He has characteristically denounced it in the
most hyperbolic terms, he is preparing to
share a stage with the only other presidential candidate that can match him in
demagogic rhetoric to repeat these denunciations, and two of the groups sponsoring the
rally that Trump will attend are among the most fanatical hawkish organizations in the
U.S. He has also repeated some of the most ludicrous and dishonest hawkish talking
points about what the deal requires of the U.S. For instance, he recently
repeated the lie that the deal obliges the U.S. to defend Iran from an Israeli
attack:
He then claimed that there’s something in the Iran deal saying if someone attacks
Iran, “we have to come to their defense.” And so he interpreted that to conclude, “If
Israel attacks Iran, according to that deal, I believe the way it reads… that we have
to fight with Iran against Israel.”
This is complete and utter nonsense, so it doesn’t surprise me that Trump believes it
(or at least claims to believe it). This is the sort of deliberate distortion of the
deal’s contents that hard-line “pro-Israel” hawks like to indulge in. Rubio said
something similar to this in his
questioning of Kerry earlier in the summer.
It should tell us everything we need to know about Trump’s views on foreign
policy that he buys into these lies and repeats them. There are all kinds of reasons not
to trust Trump’s judgment, but his statements on the nuclear deal are sufficient to
prove that his foreign policy judgment is horrible.
Before you read, though, take a moment to watch less than two minutes of
Donald Trump above, from his victory
speech after winning in Michigan and Mississippi. I’ve cued it up to start at the remarks I want
to highlight, Trump discussing our trade deficit.
Now Thomas Frank, writing in
The Guardian. He starts by noting the utter invisibility of real working Americans to
our elite class, including our media elites, and especially our liberal media elites (my emphasis
throughout):
Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here’s why
When he isn’t spewing insults, the Republican frontrunner is hammering home a powerful message
about free trade and its victims
Let us now address the greatest American mystery at the moment: what motivates the supporters
of Republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump?
I call it a “mystery” because the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s
fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but
their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers. On their opinion pages, these
publications take care to represent demographic categories of nearly every kind, but “blue-collar”
is one they persistently overlook. The views of working-class people are so foreign to that
universe that when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wanted to “engage” a Trump supporter
last week, he
made one up, along with this imaginary person’s responses to his questions.
When members of the professional class wish to understand the working-class Other, they traditionally
consult experts on the subject. And when these authorities are asked to explain the Trump movement,
they always seem to zero in on one main accusation: bigotry. Only racism, they tell us, is capable
of powering a movement like Trump’s, which is blowing through the inherited structure of the Republican
party like a tornado through a cluster of McMansions.
The conclusion of these writers is this:
The Trump movement is a one-note phenomenon, a vast surge of race-hate. Its partisans are not
only incomprehensible, they are not really worth comprehending.
And yet…
A lot of people are racists, including those not supporting Trump. But people have other
concerns as well, especially working people. They are dying faster than they used to,
from drugs and despair, and they fear for their jobs and their families, for very good reasons.
This economy is failing them.
They also hate — and understand — “free trade.”
Trump Also Talks Trade
Donald Trump talks about more than just race and immigration. He talks about trade and the trade
deficit, an issue that powered Bernie Sanders to his Michigan victory as well. From the New York
Times:
Trade and Jobs Key to Victory for Bernie Sanders
Democratic presidential candidate had campaigned in Traverse City, Mich., in decades until
Senator Bernie Sanders pulled up to the concert hall near the Sears store on Friday. Some 2,000
people mobbed him when he arrived, roaring in approval as he called the country’s trade policies,
and Hillary Clinton’s support for them, “disastrous.”
“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision about which candidate stood with workers
against corporate America and against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie
Sanders,” Mr. Sanders said in Traverse City, about 250 miles north of Detroit.
Mr. Sanders pulled off a
startling upset in Michigan on Tuesday by traveling to communities far from Detroit and by
hammering Mrs. Clinton on an issue that resonated in this still-struggling state: her past support
for trade deals that workers here believe robbed them of manufacturing jobs. Almost three-fifths
of voters said that trade with other countries was more likely to take away jobs, according
to exit polls by Edison Research, and those voters favored Mr. Sanders by a margin of more
than 10 points.
There is no question — America’s billionaire-friendly, job-destroying trade policy is toxic —
again,
literally. That’s why Obama and his bipartisan “free trade” enablers in Congress have to pass
TPP, if they can, in post-election lame duck session. TPP is also toxic to political careers, and
only lame ducks and the recently-elected can vote for it.
Frank again on Trump:
Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble
and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in
which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years.
But I also noticed something surprising. In
each of the
speeches I watched,
Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could
even be called left-wing.
Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking
about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan
to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did
it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his
political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about … trade.
It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the
many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he
will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move
back to the US.
On the subject more generally, Frank adds:
Trade is an issue that polarizes Americans by socio-economic status. To the professional
class, which encompasses the vast majority of our media figures, economists, Washington officials
and Democratic power brokers, what they call “free trade” is something so obviously good and noble
it doesn’t require explanation or inquiry or
even thought. Republican and Democratic leaders alike agree on this, and no amount of facts
can move them from their Econ 101 dream.
To the remaining 80 or 90% of America, trade means something very different. There’s
a video going around
on the internet these days that shows a room full of workers at a Carrier air conditioning plant
in Indiana being told by an officer of the company that the factory is being moved to Monterrey,
Mexico and that they’re all going to lose their jobs.
As I watched it, I thought of all the arguments over trade that we’ve had in this country since
the early 1990s, all the sweet words from our economists about the scientifically proven benevolence
of free trade, all the ways in which our newspapers mock people who say that treaties like the
North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement allow companies to move jobs to Mexico.
Well, here is a video of a company moving its jobs to Mexico, courtesy of Nafta. This is what
it looks like. The Carrier executive talks in that familiar and highly professional HR language
about the need to “stay competitive” and “the extremely price-sensitive marketplace.” A worker
shouts “Fuck you!” at the executive. The executive asks people to please be quiet so he can “share”
his “information”. His information about all of them losing their jobs.
Frank goes to greater length, and again, please
click through. But you get the idea. This is what Trump is speaking to, whether he means what
he says or not, and this is what his voters are responding to, whether they like his racism or not.
After all, haven’t you, at least once, voted for someone with qualities you dislike because of policies
you do like?
Whose Fault Is This? Both Parties, But Especially the Democratic Elites
One final point. Frank takes on the issue of responsibility:
Trump’s words articulate the populist backlash against liberalism that has been building slowly
for decades … Yet still we cannot bring ourselves to look the thing in the eyes. We cannot admit
that we liberals bear some [or most] of the blame for its emergence, for the frustration of the
working-class millions, for their blighted cities and their downward spiraling lives. So much
easier to scold them for their twisted racist souls, to close our eyes to the obvious reality
of which Trump_vs_deep_state is just a crude and ugly expression: that neoliberalism has well and truly
failed.
I am certain, if this comes up in a general election debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald
Trump, she could very likely get her clock cleaned; not certainly, but certainly very likely. First,
she can only equivocate, and Trump will have none of it. (Trump: “Let me understand. You were for
this before you were against it? So … will you be for it again next year? I’m just trying to understand.”)
Second, this is a change election, Trump is one of only two change candidates in the race, and
Clinton is not the other one.
Here’s that Carrier Air Conditioning “we’re
moving to Mexico” video that Frank mentioned above. Take a look, but prepare to feel some pain
as you watch:
FBI memos show case was to be closed with a defensive briefing before a second interview
with Flynn was sought.
Evidence withheld for years from Michael Flynn's defense team shows the FBI found "no
derogatory" Russia evidence against the former Trump National Security Adviser and that
counterintelligence agents had recommended closing down the case with a defensive briefing
before the bureau's leadership intervened in January 2017
In the text messages to his team, Strzok specifically cited "the 7th floor" of FBI
headquarters, where then-Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCane worked,
as the reason he intervened.
"Hey if you haven't closed RAZOR, don't do so yet," Strzok texted on Jan. 4,
2017
####
JFC.
Remember kids, the United States is a well oiled machine that dispenses justice equitably
along with free orange juce to the tune of 'One Nation Under a Groove.'
So, I think Mark asked about 'legal action', but as you can see Barr and others are going
through this stuff with a fine tooth comb so it is as solid when it goes public. More
importantly, it can be used as evidenec to reform such corruption and put some proper
controls in place to stop it happening again at least for a few years
And meanwhile everybody who thinks they might be in the line of fire at some future moment is
destroying evidence as fast as they can make it unfindable.
"... Comey later publicly took credit when he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over" to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case. ..."
"... In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd, although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it. Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant general ..."
"... Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the legal version of a canned trophy hunt. ..."
Previously undisclosed documents in the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn offer us a chilling
blueprint on how top FBI officials not only sought to entrap the former White House aide but
sought to do so on such blatantly unconstitutional and manufactured grounds.
These new documents further undermine the view of both the legitimacy and motivations of
those investigations under former FBI director James Comey. For all of those who have long seen
a concerted effort within the Justice Department to target the Trump administration, the
fragments will read like a Dead Sea Scrolls version of a "deep state" conspiracy.
One note reflects discussions within the FBI shortly after the 2016 election on how to
entrap Flynn in an interview concerning his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak. According to Fox News, the note was written by the former FBI head of
counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, after a meeting with Comey and his deputy director, Andrew
McCabe.
The note states, "What is our goal? Truth and admission or to get him to lie, so we can
prosecute him or get him fired?" This may have expressed an honest question over the motivation
behind this targeting of Flynn, a decision for which Comey later publicly took credit when
he had told an audience that he decided he could "get away" with sending "a couple guys over"
to the White House to set up Flynn and make the case.
The new documents also explore how the Justice Department could get Flynn to admit breaking
the Logan Act, a law that dates back to from 1799 which makes it a crime for a citizen to
intervene in disputes between the United States and foreign governments. It has never been used
to convict a citizen and is widely viewed as flagrantly unconstitutional.
In his role as the national security adviser to the president elect, there was nothing
illegal in Flynn meeting with Kislyak. To use this abusive law here was utterly absurd,
although other figures such as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates also raised it.
Nevertheless, the FBI had latched onto this abusive law to target the retired Army lieutenant
general .
Another newly released document is an email from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to former
FBI special agent Peter Strzok, who played the leadership role in targeting Flynn. In the
email, Page suggests that Flynn could be set up by making a passing reference to a federal law
that criminalizes lies to federal investigators. She suggested to Strzok that "it would be an
easy way to just casually slip that in." So this effort was not about protecting national
security or learning critical intelligence. It was about bagging Flynn for the case in the
legal version of a canned trophy hunt.
It is also disturbing that this evidence was only recently disclosed by the Justice
Department. When Flynn was pressured to plead guilty to a single count of lying to
investigators, he was unaware such evidence existed and that the federal investigators who had
interviewed him told their superiors they did not think that Flynn intentionally lied when he
denied discussing sanctions against Russia with Kislyak. Special counsel Robert Mueller and his
team changed all that and decided to bring the dubious charge. They drained Flynn financially
then threatened to charge his son.
Flynn never denied the conversation and knew the FBI had a transcript of it. Indeed,
President Trump publicly
discussed a desire to reframe Russian relations and renegotiate such areas of tensions. But
Flynn still ultimately pleaded guilty to the single false statement to federal investigators.
This additional information magnifies the doubts over the case.
Various FBI officials also lied and acted in arguably criminal or unethical ways, but all
escaped without charges. McCabe had a supervisory role in the Flynn prosecution. He was then
later found by the Justice Department inspector general to have repeatedly lied to
investigators. While his case was referred for criminal charges, McCabe was fired but never
charged. Strzok was also fired for his misconduct in the investigation.
Comey intentionally leaked FBI material, including potentially classified information but
was never charged. Another FBI agent responsible for the secret warrants used for the Russia
investigation had falsified evidence to maintain the investigation. He is still not indicted.
The disconnect of these cases with the treatment of Flynn is galling and grotesque.
Even the judge in the case has added to this disturbing record. As Flynn appeared before
District Judge Emmet Sullivan for sentencing, Sullivan launched into him and said he could be
charged with treason and with working as an unregistered agent on behalf of Turkey. Pointing to
a flag behind him, Sullivan declared to Flynn, "You were an unregistered agent of a foreign
country while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States.
That undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country
out."
Flynn was never charged with treason or with being a foreign agent. But when Sullivan
menacingly asked if he wanted a sentence then and there, Flynn wisely passed. It is a record
that truly shocks the conscience. While rare, it is still possible for the district court to
right this wrong since Flynn has not been sentenced. The Justice Department can invite the
court to use its inherent supervisory authority to right a wrong of its own making. As the
Supreme Court made clear in 1932, "universal sense of justice" is a stake in such cases. It is
the "duty of the court to stop the prosecution in the interest of the government itself to
protect it from the illegal conduct of its officers and to preserve the purity of its
courts."
Flynn was a useful tool for everyone and everything but justice. Mueller had ignored the
view of the investigators and coerced Flynn to plead to a crime he did not commit to gain
damaging testimony against Trump and his associates that Flynn did not have. The media covered
Flynn to report the flawed theory of Russia collusion and to foster the view that some sort of
criminal conspiracy was being uncovered by Mueller. Even the federal judge used Flynn to rail
against what he saw as a treasonous plot. What is left in the wake of the prosecution is an
utter travesty of justice.
Justice demands a dismissal of his prosecution. But whatever the "goal" may have been in
setting up Flynn, justice was not one of them.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington
University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley . - "
Source "
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President
Trump's former national security advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory
evidence in his case. Flynn is defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their
investigation into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally
coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that
guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case, US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will
dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen.
One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI, lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election
has been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6
officer Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing
fraud against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level
Trump advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator
envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather
part and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top – both former Director James Comey and
current Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it
was carried out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the
assistance of national security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a
conspiracy that would rival any investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn – a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years
of honorable service in the US Army – revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador
to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama
ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation
was intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian
communications. Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden, so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances
deemed critical to national security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an
investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy
of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of
the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion
scandal, is currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era
officials in relation to these articles.
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served
as the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist
for then acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn
then-White House Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his
conversations with Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet
the available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when
interviewed on January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI
parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official
testimony clearly show that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared
contemporaneously, and that he had shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case
prepared against him by the Department of Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 – over seven
months after the interview – was cited as the evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal
agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea
agreement, in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in
Giglio v. United States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators
constitutes a violation of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and
prosecutorial misconduct. Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the
government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule
of law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
Devastating flashback clip of Comey just aired on @marthamaccallum show.
When asked who went around the protocol of going through the WH Counsel's office and instead decided to send the FBI agents
into White House for the Flynn perjury trap ...
...Comey smugly responds "I sent them."
Here is the clip:
@comey is preparing for prison and hoping to avoid
the death penalty. Will Obama be brought down too?
Imagine having your life and reputation ruined by rogue US govt. officials. Then years later when the plot finally comes to
light the first thing you do is post an American flag. This is the guy they wanted you to believe was a Russian asset. 🙄
https://t.co/TI768Vijn2
U.S. District Court Judge
Emmet
G. Sullivan unsealed four pages of stunning FBI emails and handwritten notes Wednesday, regarding former Trump National Security
Advisor Michael Flynn, which allegedly reveal the retired three star general was targeted by senior FBI officials for prosecution,
stated Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell. Those notes and emails revealed that the retired three-star general appeared to be
set up for a perjury trap by the senior members of the bureau and agents charged with investigating the now-debunked allegations
that President Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, said Sidney Powell, the defense lawyer representing Flynn.
Moreover, the
Department of Justice release 11 more pages of documents Wednesday afternoon, according to Powell.
While we await Judge Sullivan's order to unseal the exhibits from Friday, the government has just provided 11 more pages even
more appalling that the Friday production. We have requested the redaction process begin immediately.
@GenFlynn @BarbaraRedgate pic.twitter.com/YPEjZWbdvo
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill Barr and
U.S. Attorney Jensen , we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as Mr. Van Grack and the prosecutors have opposed
every request we have made," said Powell.
It appears, based on the notes and emails that the Department of Justice was determined at the time to prosecute Flynn, regardless
of what they found, Powell said.
"The FBI pre-planned a deliberate attack on Gen. Flynn and willfully chose to ignore mention of Section 1001 in the interview
despite full knowledge of that practice," Powell said in a statement.
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing stating 'what is our goal? Truth/ Admission
or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
The documents, reviewed and obtained by SaraACarter.com , reveal that
senior FBI officials discussed strategies for targeting and setting up Flynn, prior to interviewing him at the White House on Jan.
24, 2017. It was that interview at the White House with former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka that
led Flynn, now 61, to plead guilty after months of pressure by prosecutors, financial strain and threats to prosecute his son.
Powell filed a motion earlier this year to withdraw Flynn's guilty plea and to dismiss his case for egregious government misconduct.
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017, under duress by government prosecutors, to lying to investigators about his conversations
with Russian diplomat
Sergey Kislyak about sanctions on Russia. This January, however, he withdrew his guilty plea in the U.S. District Court in Washington,
D.C. He stated that he was "innocent of this crime" and was coerced by the FBI and prosecutors under threats that would charge his
son with a crime. He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after DOJ prosecutors went back on their word and asked the judge to sentence
Flynn to up to six months in prison, accusing him of not cooperating in another case against his former partner. Then prosecutors
backtracked and said probation would be fine but by then Powell, his attorney, had already filed to withdraw his guilty plea.
The documents reveal that prior to the interview with Flynn in January, 2017 the FBI had already come to the conclusion that Flynn
was guilty and beyond that the officials were working together to see how best to corner the 33-year military veteran and former
head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The bureau deliberately chose not to show him the evidence of his phone conversation to
help him in his recollection of events, which is standard procedure. Even stranger, the agents that interviewed Flynn later admitted
that they didn't believe he lied during the interview with them.
Powell told this reporter last week that the documents produced by the government are "stunning Brady evidence' proving Flynn
was deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI to target President Trump.
She noted earlier this week in her motion that the evidence "also defeats any argument that the interview of Mr. Flynn on January
24 was material to any 'investigation.' The government has deliberately suppressed this evidence from the inception of this prosecution
-- knowing there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Powell told this reporter Wednesday that the order by Sullivan to unseal the documents in Exhibit 3 in the supplement to Flynn's
motion to dismiss for egregious government conduct is exposing the truth to the public. She said it's "easy to see that he was set
up and that Mr. Flynn was the insurance policy for the FBI." Powell's reference to the 'insurance policy,' is based on one of the
thousands of texts exchanged by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and her then-lover former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok.
In an Aug. 15, 2016, text from Strzok to Page he states, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's
(former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) office -- that there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's
like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40."
The new documents were turned over to Powell, by U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea. They were discovered after an extensive review by
the attorneys appointed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr to review Flynn's case, which includes U.S. Attorney of St. Louis,
Jeff Jensen.
In one of the emails dated Jan. 23, 2017, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who at the time was having an affair with Strzok and who worked
closely with him on the case discussed the charges the bureau would bring on Flynn before the actual interview at the White House
took place. Those email exchanges were prepared for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the DOJ for lying
multiple times to investigators with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's office.
Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by President Trump for his conduct, revealed during an interview with Nicolle Wallace
last year that he sent the FBI agents to interview Flynn at the White House under circumstances he would have never done to another
administration.
"I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized investigation, a more organized administration,"
Comey said. "In the George W. Bush administration or the Obama administration, two men that all of us, perhaps, have increased appreciation
for over the last two years."
In the Jan 23, email Page asks Strzok the day before he interviews Flynn at the White House:
"I have a question for you. Could the admonition re 1001 be given at the beginning at the interview? Or does it have
to come following a statement which agents believe to be false? Does the policy speak to that? (I feel bad that I don't know this
but I don't remember ever having to do this! Plus I've only charged it once in the context of lying to a federal probation officer).
It seems to be if the former, then it would be an easy way to just casually slip that in.
"Of course as you know sir, federal law makes it a crime to "
Strzok's response:
I haven't read the policy lately, but if I recall correctly, you can say it at any time. I'm 90 percent sure about that, but
I can check in the am.
In the motion filed earlier this week, Powell stated "since August 2016 at the latest, partisan FBI and DOJ leaders conspired
to destroy Mr. Flynn. These documents show in their own handwriting and emails that they intended either to create an offense they
could prosecute or at least get him fired. Then came the incredible malfeasance of Mr. Van Grack's and the SCO's prosecution despite
their knowledge there was no crime by Mr. Flynn."
Attached to the email is handwritten notes regarding Flynn that are stunning on their face. It is lists of how the agents will
guide him in an effort to get him to trip up on his answers during their questioning and what charges they could bring against him.
"If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide," state the handwritten notes.
"Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it."
The next two points reveal that the agents were concerned about how their interview with Flynn would be perceived saying "if we're
seen as playing games, WH (White House) will be furious."
"Protect our institution by not playing games," t he last point on the first half of the hand written notes state.
From the handwritten note:
Afterwards:
interview
I agreed yesterday that we shouldn't show Flynn (redacted) if he didn't admit
I thought @ it last night, I believe we should rethink this
What is (not legible) ? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?
we regularly show subjects evidence, with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing
I don't see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him
If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide
Or if he initially lies, then we present him (not legible) & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address
it
If we're seen as playing games, WH will be furious
Protect our institution by not playing games
(Left column)
we have case on Flynn & Russians
Our goal is to (not legible)
Our goal is to determine if Mike Flynn is going to tell the truth or if he lies @ relationship w/ Russians
can quote (redacted)
Shouldn't (redacted
Review (not legible) stand alone
It appears evident from an email from former FBI agent Strzok, who interviewed Flynn at the White House to then FBI General Counsel
James Baker, who is no longer with the FBI and was himself under investigation for leaking alleged national security information
to the media.
The email was a series of questions to prepare McCabe for his phone conversation with Flynn on the day the agents went to interview
him at the White House. These questions would be questions that Flynn may ask McCabe before sending the agents over to interview
him.
Email from Peter Strzok, cc'd to FBI General Counsel James Baker: (January 24, 2017)
I'm sure he's thought through these, but for DD's (referencing Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) consideration about how to answer
in advance of his call with Flynn:
Am I in trouble?
Am I the subject of an investigation?
Is it a criminal investigation?
Is it an espionage investigation? Do I need an attorney? Do I need to tell Priebus? The President?
Will you tell Priebus? The President? Will you tell the WH what I tell you?
What happens to the information/who will you tell what I tell you? Will you need to interview other people?
Will our interview be released publically? Will the substance of our interview be released?
How long will this take (depends on his cooperation – I'd plan 45 minutes)? Can we do this over the phone?
I can explain all this right now, I did this, this, this [do you shut him down? Hear him out? Conduct the interview if he starts
talking? Do you want another agent/witness standing by in case he starts doing this?]
President Donald Trump has bashed former FBI Director James Comey, after unsealed documents
revealed an agency plot to entrap Gen. Michael Flynn in a bid to take down the Trump
presidency. "DIRTY COP JAMES COMEY GOT CAUGHT!" Trump tweeted on Thursday morning, in
one of a series of tweets lambasting the FBI's prosecution of retired army general Michael
Flynn, which he called a "scam."
Flynn served as Trump's national security adviser in the first days of the Trump presidency,
before he was fired for allegedly lying about his contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak.
An FBI investigation followed, and several months later, Flynn pleaded guilty to Special
Counsel Robert Mueller about lying during interviews with agents. He has since tried to
withdraw the plea, citing poor legal defense and accusing the FBI and Obama administration of
setting him up from the outset.
Documents unsealed by a federal judge on Wednesday seem to support that argument. In one
handwritten note, dated the same day as Flynn's FBI interview in January 2017, the unidentified
note-taker jots down some potential strategies to use against the former general.
"We have a case on Flynn + Russians," the note reads. "What's our goal?
Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
#FLYNN docs just
unsealed, including handwritten notes 1/24/2017 day of Flynn FBI interview. Transcript: "What
is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?"
Read transcript notes, copy original just filed. @CBSNews
pic.twitter.com/8oqUok8i7m
The unsealed documents also include an email exchange between former agent Peter Strzok and
former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which the pair pondered whether to remind Flynn that lying to
federal agents is a crime. Page and Strzok were later fired from the agency, after a slew of
text messages emerged showing the pair's mutual disdain for Trump, and discussing the
formulation of an "insurance policy" against his election.
Flynn's discussions with Kislyak were deemed truthful by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe. Additionally, a Washington Post
article published the day before Flynn's January 2017 interview revealed that the FBI had
tapped his calls with the Russian ambassador and found "nothing illicit."
Still, Section 1001 of the US Criminal Code, which makes it illegal to lie to a federal
agent, is broad in its scope. Defense Attorney Solomon Wisenberg
wrote that "even a decent person who tries to stay out of trouble can face criminal
exposure under Section 1001 through a fleeting conversation with government agents."
Early January 2017 Recommendation To Close Case on General Flynn Rebuffed by FBI Leaders
by Larry C Johnson
The document dump from the Department of Justice on the Michael Flynn case continues and the
information is shocking and damning. It is now clear why previous leaders of the Department of
Justice (Sessions and Rosenstein) and current FBI Director Wray tried to keep this material
hidden. There is now no doubt that Jim Comey and Andy McCabe help lead and direct a conspiracy
to frame Michael Flynn for a "crime" regardless of the actual facts surrounding General Flynn's
conduct.
The most stunning revelation from today's document release is that the FBI agents who
investigated Michael Flynn aka "Crossfire Razor" RECOMMENDED on the 4th of January 2017 that
the investigation of Flynn be closed. Let that sink in. The FBI agents investigating Flynn
found nothing to justify either a criminal or counter-intelligence investigation more than two
weeks before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Yet, FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy
Director McCabe, with the help of General Counsel Jim Baker, Assistant Director for Counter
Intelligence Bill Priestap, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok decided to try to manufacture a crime
against Flynn.
The documents released on Wednesday made clear that as of January 21st, the FBI Conspirators
were scrambling to find pretext for entrapping and charging General Flynn. Here is the
transcription of Bill Priestap's handwritten notes:
Apologists for these criminal acts by FBI officials insist this was all routine. "Nothing to
see here." "Move along." Red State's Nick Arama did a good job of reporting on the absurdity of
this idiocy (
see here ). Former US Attorney Andy McCarthy cuts to the heart of the matter:
"They did not have a legitimate investigative reason for doing this and there was no
criminal predicate or reason to treat him [Flynn] like a criminal suspect," McCarthy
explained.
"They did the interview outside of the established protocols of how the FBI is supposed to
interview someone on the White House staff. They are supposed to go through the Justice
Department and the White House counsel's office. They obviously purposely did not do that and
they were clearly trying to make a case on this."
"For years, a number of us have been arguing that this looked like a perjury trap," McCarthy
said.
Today's (Thursday) document dump reinforces the validity of McCarthy's conclusion that this
was a concocted perjury trap. The key document is the "Closing Communication" PDF dated 4
January 2017. It is a summary of the FBI's investigation of Crossfire Razor (i.e., Mike Flynn).
The document begins with this summary:
The FBI opened captioned case based on an articulable factual basis that Crossfire Razor
(CR) may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation
which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security. . . . Specifically, .
. . CR had ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by
open source information; and CR traveled to Russia in December 2015, as reported by open source
information.
The Agent conveniently fails to mention that Flynn's contacts with Russia in December 2015
were not at his initiative but came as an invitation from his Speaker's Bureau. Moreover,
General Flynn, because he still held TS/SCI clearances, informed the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) of the trip, received permission to make the trip and, upon returning to the
United States from Russia, was fully debriefed by DIA. How is that an indicator of posing a
threat to the national security of the United States?
The goal of the investigation is stated very clearly on page two of the document:
. . . to determine whether the captioned subject, associated with the Trump campaign, was
directed and controlled by and/or coordinated activities with the Russian federation in a
manner which is a threat to the national security and/or possibly a violation of the Foreign
Agents Registration Act, 18 U.S.C. section 951 et seq, or other related statutes.
And what did the FBI find? NOTHING. NADA. ZIPPO. The Agent who wrote this report played it
straight and the investigation in the right way. He or she concluded:
The Crossfire Hurricane team determined that CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable
candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case. . . . The FBI is closing
this investigation. If new information is identified or reported to the FBI regarding the
activities of CROSSFIRE RAZOR, the FBI will consider reopening the investigation if
warranted.
This document is dated 4 January 2017. But Peter Strzok sent a storm of text messages to the
Agent who drafted the report asking him to NOT close the case.
This is not how a normal criminal or counter-intelligence case would be conducted. Normally
you would have actual evidence or "indicia" of criminal or espionage activity. But don't take
me word for it. Jim Comey bragged about this outrageous
conduct:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/NxNhjFrjXqI
Comey is a corrupt, sanctimonious prick. I suspect he may not think what he did was so funny
in the coming months. He may have forgotten saying this stupidity, but the video remains
intact.
The documents being released over the last week provide great insight into Attorney General
William Barr's strategy. He is not going to entertain media debates and back-and-forth with the
apologists for treason. He is letting the documents speak for themselves and ensuring that US
Attorneys--who are not part of the fetid, Washington, DC sewer--review the documents and
procedures used to prosecute political figures linked to President Trump. Then those documents
are legally and appropriately released. Barr is playing by the rules.
We are not talking about the inadvertent discovery of an isolated mistake or an act of
carelessness. The coup against Trump was deliberate and the senior leadership of the FBI
actively and knowingly participated in this plot. Exposing and punishing them remains a top
priority for Attorney General Barr, who understands that a failure to act could spell the doom
of this Republic.
No indictments.
Not for this bunch of swamp rats.
One set of laws for the swamp, another for America.
And now the same swamp - the bureaucrat pinhead version - are destroying the economy and
shutting down the country?.
Why?
Terrible decisions based on worse "data" AND tank the economy and Trump's re-election
chances.
Flynn has been bankrupted. He has fought valiantly to restore his honor ALONE. His fate is in
many ways in the hands of Judge Sullivan.
Trump other than tweet has done what for someone that brought military and national
security cred to his campaign? Let's not forget that Flynn was fired ostensibly for lying to
VP Pence. Exactly what the putschists wanted to accomplish.
blue peacock
Flynn is a nice Irish Catholic boy from Rhode Island whose father a retired MP staff sergeant
and branch manager of a local bank successfully cultivated the ROTC staff at U of RI so that
his two sons were given army ROTC scholarships in management, something their father could
understand. Michael and his brother, both generals are NOT members of the WP club and
therefore available for sacrifice. Michael Flynn occupied a narrow niche in Military
Intelligence. He was a targeting guy in the counter-terrorism bidness and rode that train to
the top without much knowledge or experience of anything else. He and his boss Stan
McChrystal, soul mates. He was singularly unqualified to be head of one of the major agencies
of the IC. IMO Martin Dempsey, CJCS (a member of the WP club) used Flynn to stand up to
Brennan's CIA and the NSC nuts at the WH while standing back in the shade himself. That is
why Obama cautioned Trump to be wary of North Korea and Michael Flynn. And this "innocent"
was then mousetrapped by people he thought were patriots.
True then, but what was not expected was Trump neither resigning nor being impeached nor
getting a new AG who would launch the Durham investigation. I wonder what FISA warrants are
out related to the Chinese virus and associated communications with US and Chinese nationals.
At least we don't have Obama's cast of characters involved in that, unless we have his "j.v."
team.
Someone that doesn't show up much in The NY Times or the Washington Post now but was the
central character in numerous scurrilous stories. Svetlana Lokhova was falsely slandered for
having an affair with Gen.Flynn and accused as a Russian agent by CIA/FBI agent Stefan
Halper.
What we learned today from the STUNNING document release in the case of @GenFlynn 1. FBI
opened a full-blown counterintelligence investigation in 2016 on the ex head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency while he was working for a political campaign based on one piece of
false intel
Its mind blowing the vast tentacles of this conspiracy at the highest levels of our law
enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is even more mind blowing that the miscreants have
profited so handsomely with book deals, media sinecures, GoFundMe campaigns. None have been
prosecuted.
Newly unsealed documents indicate that the FBI targeted former National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn for prosecution, showing senior officials at the bureau discussing ways to
ensnare him in a "perjury trap" before an interview.
The four pages of documents were
unsealed by US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on Wednesday, revealing in handwritten notes
and emails that the FBI's goal in investigating Flynn may have been "to get him to lie so we
can prosecute him or get him fired."
"The FBI planned it as a perjury trap at best and in so doing put it in writing,"
Flynn's defense attorney Sidney Powell said in a statement.
Sullivan also ordered another 11 pages of documents unsealed, which, according to Powell ,
may soon be redacted and published.
How they planned to get Flynn removed:1) Get Flynn "to admit to breaking the Logan Act";
or2) Catch Flynn in a lie.Their end goal was a referral to the DOJ - not to investigate
Flynn's contacts with the Russians. pic.twitter.com/Vty3FYaSt9
The potentially exculpatory documents were inexplicably denied to Flynn's defense team for
years, despite numerous requests to the government.
"What is especially terrifying is that without the integrity of Attorney General Bill
Barr and US Attorney Jensen, we still would not have this clear exculpatory information as ...
the prosecutors have opposed every request we have made," Powell said.
The role of the FBI in instigating the prosecution of Michael Flynn, the criminality of its conduct, and
the encouragement it received in doing so from senior Obama officials should offend everyone.
In a dramatic new turn of events, the legal team for Flynn, President Trump's former national security
advisor, says the Department of Justice has turned over exculpatory evidence in his case.Flynn is
defending against charges he lied to FBI agents in the course of their investigation into allegations of
Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
At a minimum, this information, which
includes evidence that US government prosecutors illegally coerced a guilty plea by threatening Flynn's
son with prosecution, warrants the withdrawal of that guilty plea. Whether or not the judge in the case,
US District Court Judge Emmet G Sullivan, will dismiss the entire case against Flynn on the grounds of
prosecutorial misconduct is yet to be seen. One fact, however, emerges from this sordid affair: the FBI,
lauded by its supporters as the world's
"premier law enforcement agency,"
is anything but.
Evidence of FBI misconduct during its investigation into alleged collusion between members of the
Trump campaign team and the Russian government in the months leading up to the presidential election has
been mounting for some time. From mischaracterizing information provided by former British MI6 officer
Christopher Steele in order to manufacture a case against then-candidate Trump, to committing fraud
against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize wiretaps on former low-level Trump
advisor Carter Page, the FBI has a record of corruption that would make a third-world dictator envious.
The crimes committed under the aegis of the FBI are not the actions of rogue agents, but rather part
and parcel of a systemic effort managed from the very top – both former Director James Comey and current
Director Christopher Wray are implicated in facilitating this criminal conduct. Moreover, it was carried
out in collaboration with elements within the Department of Justice, and with the assistance of national
security officials working for the Obama administration, making for a conspiracy that would rival any
investigation conducted by the FBI under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
The heart of the case against Michael Flynn – a flamboyant, decorated combat veteran, with 33 years of
honorable service in the US Army – revolves around a phone call he made to the Russian ambassador to the
United States, Sergey Kislyak, on December 29, 2016. That was the same day then-President Obama ordered
the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US on charges of espionage. The conversation was
intercepted by the National Security Agency as part of its routine monitoring of Russian communications.
Normally, the identities of US citizens caught up in such surveillance are
"masked,"
or hidden,
so as to preserve their constitutional rights. However, in certain instances deemed critical to national
security, the identity can be
"unmasked"
to help further an investigation, using
"minimization"
standards designed to protect the identities and privacy of US citizens.
In Flynn's case, these
"minimization"
standards were thrown out the window: on January 12,
2017, and again on February 9, the Washington Post published articles that detailed Flynn's phone call
with Kislyak. US Attorney John Durham, tasked by Attorney General William P Barr to lead a review of the
actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials as part of the Russian collusion scandal, is
currently investigating the potential leaking of classified information by Obama-era officials in
relation to these articles.
Flynn's phone call with Kislyak was the central topic of interest when a pair of FBI agents, led by
Peter Strzok, met with Flynn in his White House office on January 24, 2017. This meeting later served as
the source of the charge levied against him for lying to a federal agent. It also provided grist for then
acting-Attorney General Sally Yates to travel to the White House on January 26 to warn then-White House
Counsel Michael McGahn that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with
Kislyak, and, as such, was in danger of being compromised by the Russians.
That Flynn lied, or otherwise misrepresented, his conversation with Kislyak to Pence is not in
dispute; indeed, it was this act that prompted President Trump to fire Flynn in the first place. But
lying to the Vice President, while wrong, is not a crime. Lying to FBI agents, however, is. And yet the
available evidence suggests that not only did Flynn not lie to Strzok and his partner when interviewed on
January 24, but that the FBI later doctored its report of the interview, known in FBI parlance as a
"302 report,"
to show that Flynn had. Internal FBI documents and official testimony clearly show
that a 302 report on Strzok's conversation with Flynn was prepared contemporaneously, and that he had
shown no indication of deception. However, in the criminal case prepared against him by the Department of
Justice, a 302 report dated August 22, 2017 – over seven months after the interview – was cited as the
evidence underpinning the charge of lying to a federal agent.
The evidence of a doctored 302 report, when combined with the evidence that the US prosecutor
conspired with Flynn's former legal counsel to
"keep secret"
the details of his plea agreement,
in violation of so-called Giglio requirements (named after the legal precedent set in Giglio v. United
States which holds that the failure to disclose immunity deals to co-conspirators constitutes a violation
of due-process rights), constitutes a clear-cut case of FBI malfeasance and prosecutorial misconduct.
Under normal circumstances, that should warrant the dismissal of the government's case against Flynn.
Whether Judge Emmet G Sullivan will agree to a dismissal, or, if not, whether the Department of
Justice would seek to retry Flynn, are not known at this time. What is known, however, is the level of
corruption that exists within the FBI and elements of the Department of Justice, regarding their
prosecution of a US citizen for purely political motive. Notions of integrity and fealty to the rule of
law that underpin the opinions of many Americans when it comes to these two institutions have been
shredded in the face of overwhelming evidence that the law is meaningless when the FBI targets you. If
this could happen to a man with Michael Flynn's stature and reputation, it can happen to anyone.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing
the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on
Twitter @RealScottRitter
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
"... Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC, Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to journalist and side-piece Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes. ..."
"... What's next on the real-life House of Cards? ..."
A
week of two-tiered
legal shenanigans was capped off on Friday with a
New York
Times report that Attorney General William Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to
scrutinize the government's case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn,
which the Times suggested was " highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political
interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors."
Notably, the FBI excluded
crucial information from a '302' form documenting an interview with Flynn in January, 2017.
While Flynn eventually pleaded guilty to misleading agents over his contacts with the former
Russian ambassador regarding the Trump administration's efforts to oppose a UN resolution
related to Israel, the original draft of Flynn's 302 reveals that agents thought
he was being honest with them - evidence which Flynn's prior attorneys never pursued.
His new attorney, Sidney Powell, took over Flynn's defense in June 2019 - while Flynn
withdrew his guilty plea in January , accusing the government of "bad faith,
vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement."
In addition to a review of the Flynn case, Barr has hired a handful of outside prosecutors
to broadly review several other politically sensitive national-security cases in the US
attorney's office in Washington , according to the Times sources.
Of particular interest will be cases overseen by now-unemployed former US attorney for DC,
Jessie Liu, which includes actions against Stone, Flynn, the Awan brothers, James Wolfe and
others . Notably, Wolfe was only sentenced to leaking a classified FISA warrant application to
journalist and side-piece
Ali Watkins of the New York Times - while prosecutors out of Liu's office threw the book at
former Trump adviser Roger Stone - recommending 7-9 years in prison for process crimes.
Earlier this week, Barr overruled the DC prosecutors recommendation for Stone, resulting in
their resignations. The result was the predictable triggering of Democrats across the spectrum
.
According to the Times , "Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun
grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases -- some public, some not
-- including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to
the people. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal
deliberations."
The moves amounted to imposing a secondary layer of monitoring and control over what
career prosecutors have been doing in the Washington office. They are part of a broader
turmoil in that office coinciding with Mr. Barr's recent
installation of a close aide, Timothy Shea , as interim United States attorney in the
District of Columbia, after Mr. Barr maneuvered out the Senate-confirmed former top
prosecutor in the office, Jessie K. Liu.
Mr.
Flynn's case was first brought by the special counsel's office, who agreed to a plea deal
on a charge of lying to investigators in exchange for his cooperation, before the Washington
office took over the case when the special counsel shut down after concluding its
investigation into Russia's election interference.
-New
York Times
I was obvious that Flynn was targeted for elimination by what ludicrously calls itself the
"resistance" right from the beginning using Hoover's G-boys and girls who have by the way
been heavily infiltrated by CIA to get him.
Many of the players involved in this act worked in CI which is closely connected to the
CIA's own counter intelligence. In fact the connections are so incestuous that many of the
FBI's "agents" are sheep dipped Agency officers.
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
Why? Probably because they are working on the same team as CIA, NSA, DIA, DHS and the
other alphabet soup agencies who gain their power from what could be correctly called the War
of Terror. Flynn being a threat because he was in agreement with Trump's proposed
noninterventionist foreign policy.
The same one he promised his voters but has currently reneged on. Remember the
"resistance" as they call themselves but are really the same ol' shit faction want America
constantly embroiled in Foreign conflicts and the operation known as the "Purple
Revolution"by the same group who likes to color code their regime changes was not only to
take down Flynn but Trump as well. A soft coup in other words.
Now that Trump's playing ball they can go after his base and those on the left who oppose
the usual that the so called "resistance' offers.
Seamus Padraig ,
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover
despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently
seems obsessed by it.
The FBI does have a counter-intelligence function, so that would give them some legitimate
interest in the activities of foreign intelligence services, at least; but I suspect their
obsession with Trump and Flynn goes far, far beyond any legitimate legal mandate.
True they've always had a CI function but it was more like a total Keystone Kops' operation.
Still is probably when you consider that Hannssen worked in their CI for over two decades
without being detected.
Of there's CIA with James Jesus Angleton who was a good friend of Kim Philby who wrecked
any CI capability both FBI and CIA had by being suspicious of any Russiaphile.
In fact this whole Russiaphobia and hoax is probably the resurrection of the ghost of
Angleton.
True Hoover spent more time chasing Commie and creating the Red Scare than he did cross
dressing and hanging out a Mob hangouts which he assured us didn't exist.
Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn filed a supplemental motion to withdraw his
guilty plea Wednesday citing failure by his previous counsel to advise him of the firm's
'conflict of interest in his case' regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act form it filed
on his behalf, and by doing so "betrayed Mr. Flynn," stated Sidney Powell, in a defense motion
to the court.
Flynn's case is now in its final phase and his sentencing date, which was scheduled for Jan.
28, in a D.C. federal court before Judge Emmet Sullivan was changed to Feb. 27. The change came
after Powell filed the motion to withdraw his plea just days after the prosecutors made a major
reversal asking for up to six months jail time. The best case scenario for Flynn, is that Judge
Sullivan allows him to withdraw his guilty plea, the sentencing date is thrown-out and then his
case would more than likely would head to trial.
Powell alleged in a motion in December, 2019 that Flynn was strong-armed by the prosecution
into pleading guilty to one count of lying to FBI investigators regarding his conversation with
former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Others, close to Flynn, have corroborated the
accounts suggesting prosecutors threatened to drag Flynn's son into the investigation, who also
worked with his father at Flynn Intel Group, a security company established by Flynn.
In the recent motion Flynn denounced his admission of guilt in a declaration,
"I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea. After I signed the
plea, the attorneys returned to the room and confirmed that the [special counsel's office]
would no longer be pursuing my son."
He denied that he lied to the FBI during the White House meeting with then FBI Special Agent
Peter Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka. The meeting was set up by now fired FBI
Director James Comey and then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was also fired for lying to
Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigators. Strzok was fired by the FBI for his actions
during the Russia investigation.
Flynn stated:
"When FBI agents came to the White House on January 24, 2017, I did not lie to them. I
believed I was honest with them to the best of my recollection at the time. I still don't
remember if I discussed sanctions on a phone call with Ambassador Kislyak nor do I remember
if we discussed the details of a UN vote on Israel."
Powell Targets Flynn's Former Legal Team
Powell noted in Wednesday's motion that Flynn's former defense team at Covington &
Burling, a well known Washington D.C. law firm, failed to inform Flynn that their lawyers had
made "some initial errors or statements that were misunderstood in the FARA registration
process and filings." She also reaffirmed her position in the motion that government
prosecutors are continuing to withhold exculpatory information that would benefit Flynn.
A spokesperson with Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling, stated in an email to
SaraACarter.com that "Under the bar rules, we are limited in our ability to respond publicly
even to allegations of this nature, absent the client's consent or a court order."
In Powell's motion, she stated that Covington and Burling was well aware that it had a
'conflict of interest' in representing Flynn after November 1, 2017. She stated in the motion
it was on that day, when Special Counsel prosecutors had notified Covington that "it recognized
Covington's conflict of interest from the FARA registration." Moreover, the government had
asked Covington lawyers to discuss the discrepancy and conflict with Flynn, Powell stated in
the motion.
"Mr. Flynn's former counsel at Covington made some initial errors or statements that were
misunderstood in the FARA registration process and filings, which the SCO amplified, thereby
creating an 'underlying work' conflict of interest between the firm and its client," stated
Powell in the motion.
"Government counsel specified Mr. Flynn's liability for 'false statements' in the FARA
registration, and he told Covington to discuss it with Mr. Flynn," states the motion.
"This etched the conflict in stone. Covington betrayed Mr. Flynn."
Powell included in her motion an email from Flynn's former law firm Covington & Burling
between his former attorney's Steven Anthony and Robert Kelner. The email was regarding the
Special Counsel's then-charges against Paul Manafort, who had been a short term campaign
manager for Trump. Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, were then faced with 'multiple criminal
violations, including FARA violations."
Internal Email From the motion:
In the internal email sent to Kelner, Anthony addresses his concerns after the Manafort
order was unsealed.
I just had a flash of a thought that we should consider, among many many factors with
regard to Bob Kelley, the possibility that the SCO has decided it does not have, [with regard
to] Flynn, the same level of showing of crime fraud exception as it had [with regard to]
Manafort. And that the SCO currently feels stymied in pursuing a Flynn-lied-to-his-lawyers
theory of a FARA violation. So, we should consider the conceivable risk that a disclosure of
the Kelley declaration might break through a wall that the SCO currently considers
impenetrable.
In February, 2017, then Department of Justice official David Laufman had called Flynn's
lawyers to push them to file a FARA, the motion states. In fact, it was a day after Flynn was
fired as the National Security Advisor for Trump. Laufman made the call to the Covington and
Burling office "to pressure them to file the FARA forms immediately," according to the
motion.
Laufman's push for Flynn's FARA seemed peculiar considering, Flynn's company 'Flynn Intel
Group' had filed a Lobbying Registration Act in September, 2016. Former partner to Flynn Bijan
Rafiekian, had been advised at the time by then lawyer Robert Kelly that there was no need for
the firm to file a FARA because it was not dealing directly with a foreign country or foreign
government official, as stated during his trial. In Rafiekian's trial Kelly testified that he
advised the Flynn Intel Group that by law they only needed to file a Lobbying Disclosure Act
and suggested they didn't need to file a FARA when dealing with a foreign company. In this
instance it was Innova BV, a firm based in Holland and owned by the Turkish businessman, Ekim
Alptekin.
Flynn's former Partner's Case Overturned, Powell Cites Case In Motion
In September, 2019, however, in a stunning move Judge Anthony Trenga with the Eastern
District of Virginia Rafiekian's conviction was overturned. Trenga stated in his lengthy
acquittal decision that government prosecutors did not make their case and the "jury was not
adequately instructed as to the role of Michael Flynn in light of the government's in-court
judicial admission that Flynn was not a member of the alleged conspiracy and the lack of
evidence sufficient to establish his participation in any conspiracy "
An important side note, Laufman continually posts anti-Trump tweets and is frequently on CNN
and MSNBC targeting the administration and its policies.
These despicable remarks reflect contempt for democracy and government accountability, and
constitute further evidence of the President's unfitness to lead our great nation. Republican
Members of Congress, stand up and fulfill your oaths. https://t.co/a8BwWkLTkv
Powell said prosecutors reversed course on their decision to not push for jail time for
Flynn in early January because she said, her client "refused to lie for the prosecution" in the
Rafiekian case.
do yourselves a favor and read her brief...Covington and the FBI are EVIL
BASTARDS......god help any of us who find ourselves in the govt crosshairs..I don't give a
rat's *** how much you despise Trump...these bastards in DC would cut your heads off if they
could profit from it.
Worse than that in this case. He had a deal that if he plead guilty they wouldn't go after
his son and they wouldn't recommend prison time for him. He did what they asked. Then they
recommended prison time in the end anyway.
How that isn't legal malpractice, I'm sure I don't know.
He may as well try suing the Queen of England. Federal prosecutors and federal law
enforcement agents have almost complete immunity from civil causes of action arising from the
performance of their duties, even if they acted maliciously, lied, etc. It's good to be the
King (or Queen, or a federal prosecutor). People generally have no idea how badly the deck is
stacked against them if they end up in the cross hairs of these people.
Ukrainegate has definite signs of Soros funded operation
Notable quotes:
"... America's globalists and interventionists are already pushing the meme that because so many establishment and entrenched national security and military "experts" opposed Trump's candidacy, Trump is "required" to call on them to join his administration because there are not enough such "experts" among Trump's inner circle of advisers. ..."
"... Discredited neo-conservatives from George W. Bush's White House, such as Iraq war co-conspirator Stephen Hadley, are being mentioned as someone Trump should have join his National Security Council and other senior positions. George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State James Baker, a die-hard Bush loyalist, is also being proffered as a member of Trump's White House team. ..."
"... There is absolutely no reason for Trump to seek the advice from old Republican fossils like Baker, Hadley, former Secretaries of State Rice and Powell, the lunatic former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and others. There are plenty of Trump supporters who have a wealth of experience in foreign and national security matters, including those of African, Haitian, Hispanic, and Arab descent and who are not neocons, who can fill Trump's senior- and middle-level positions. ..."
"... Trump must distance himself from sudden well-wishing neocons, adventurists, militarists, and interventionists and not permit them to infest his administration. ..."
"... PNAC: Project for New American Century. The main neocon lobby, it focused first on invading Iraq. Founded 1997, by William Kristol & Robert Kagan. First action: open letter to Clinton advocating Iraq war. Members in the Iraq-War clique: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, BOLTON, Libby, Abrams, Wurmser, Perle. ..."
"... HE PROMISED he would appoint a special prosecutor, PROMISED... ..."
"... Trump should reverse the McCain Feingold bill. That would take some wind out of Soros' sails, at least temporarily because that was Soros' bill. He wanted campaign finance reform which actually meant that he wanted to control campaign finance through 501C3 groups, or foundations such as Open Society, Moveon.org, Ella Baker society, Center for American progress, etc. He has a massive web of these organizations and they fund smaller ones and all kinds of evil. ..."
"... Tyler, please rerun this! How George Sorros destroys countries, profits from currency trading, convinces the countries to privatize its assets, buys them and then sells them for yet another profit: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-08/how-george-soros-singlehandedly... ..."
"... We know so little about Trump ... he's neoCon friendly to start with (remember he hired neoCon Grandee James Woolsey as an advisor)... and remember too Trump is promising his own war against Iran ... ..."
"... JFK was gunned down in front of the whole world. ..."
"... If Trump really is a nationalist patriot he'll need to innoculate the Population about the Deep State... they in turn will unleash financial disintegration and chaos, a Purple Revolution and then assassinate Trump (or have his own party impeach him) ..."
"... Organizing a means to receive the protestors' complaints may co-opt any organized effort to disrupt good political interaction and it will also separate out the bad elements cited by Madsen. ..."
"... AMERICAN SPRING: She practiced overseas in Tunisia, Algeria, Oman, Jordan, Libya, Egypt... Now it's time to apply the knowledge in her own country! ..."
"... Really good chance these subversive operations will continue. Soros has plenty of money ..."
Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to "go quietly into that good night". On the morning
after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband,
former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned
in purple attire. The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent
the coming together of Democratic "Blue America" and Republican "Red America" into a united purple blend. This statement was a complete
ruse as is known by citizens of countries targeted in the past by the vile political operations of international hedge fund tycoon
George Soros.
The Clintons, who both have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions and Clinton Foundation donations from Soros,
were, in fact, helping to launch Soros's "Purple Revolution" in America. The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump
administration to push back against the globalist policies of the Clintons and soon-to-be ex-President Barack Obama. The Purple Revolution
will also seek to make the Trump administration a short one through Soros-style street protests and political disruption.
It is doubtful that President Trump's aides will advise the new president to carry out a diversionary criminal investigation of
Mrs. Clinton's private email servers and other issues related to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, especially when the nation
faces so many other pressing issues, including jobs, immigration, and health care. However, House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said he will continue hearings in the Republican-controlled Congress on Hillary Clinton, the
Clinton Foundation, and Mrs. Clinton's aide
Huma Abedin
. President Trump should not allow himself to be distracted by these efforts. Chaffetz was not one of Trump's most loyal supporters.
America's globalists and interventionists are already pushing the meme that because so many establishment and entrenched national
security and military "experts" opposed Trump's candidacy, Trump is "required" to call on them to join his administration because
there are not enough such "experts" among Trump's inner circle of advisers.
Discredited neo-conservatives from George W. Bush's White House, such as Iraq war co-conspirator Stephen Hadley, are being
mentioned as someone Trump should have join his National Security Council and other senior positions. George H. W. Bush's Secretary
of State James Baker, a die-hard Bush loyalist, is also being proffered as a member of Trump's White House team.
There is absolutely no reason for Trump to seek the advice from old Republican fossils like Baker, Hadley, former Secretaries
of State Rice and Powell, the lunatic former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and others. There are plenty of Trump
supporters who have a wealth of experience in foreign and national security matters, including those of African, Haitian, Hispanic,
and Arab descent and who are not neocons, who can fill Trump's senior- and middle-level positions.
Trump must distance himself from sudden well-wishing neocons, adventurists, militarists, and interventionists and not permit
them to infest his administration. If Mrs. Clinton had won the presidency, an article on the incoming administration would have
read as follows:
"Based on the militarism and foreign adventurism of her term as Secretary of State and her husband Bill Clinton's two terms
as president, the world is in store for major American military aggression on multiple fronts around the world. President-elect
Hillary Clinton has made no secret of her desire to confront Russia militarily, diplomatically, and economically in the Middle
East, on Russia's very doorstep in eastern Europe, and even within the borders of the Russian Federation. Mrs. Clinton has dusted
off the long-discredited 'containment' policy ushered into effect by Professor George F. Kennan in the aftermath of World War.
Mrs. Clinton's administration will likely promote the most strident neo-Cold Warriors of the Barack Obama administration, including
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, a personal favorite of Clinton".
President-elect Trump cannot afford to permit those who are in the same web as Nuland, Hadley, Bolton, and others to join his
administration where they would metastasize like an aggressive form of cancer. These individuals would not carry out Trump's policies
but seek to continue to damage America's relations with Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and other nations.
Not only must Trump have to deal with Republican neocons trying to worm their way into his administration, but he must deal with
the attempt by Soros to disrupt his presidency and the United States with a Purple Revolution
No sooner had Trump been declared the 45th president of the United States, Soros-funded political operations launched their activities
to disrupt Trump during Obama's lame-duck period and thereafter. The swiftness of the Purple Revolution is reminiscent of the speed
at which protesters hit the streets of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004 and
the other, ten years later, in 2014.
As the Clintons were embracing purple in New York, street demonstrations, some violent, all coordinated by the Soros-funded Moveon.org
and "Black Lives Matter", broke out in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland, Nashville, Cleveland, Washington, Austin, Seattle,
Philadelphia, Richmond, St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, San Francisco, and some 200 other cities across the United States.
The Soros-financed Russian singing group "Pussy Riot" released on YouTube an anti-Trump music video titled "Make America Great
Again". The video went "viral" on the Internet. The video, which is profane and filled with violent acts, portrays a dystopian Trump
presidency. Following the George Soros/Gene Sharp script to a tee, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova called for anti-Trump Americans
to turn their anger into art, particularly music and visual art. The use of political graffiti is a popular Sharp tactic. The street
protests and anti-Trump music and art were the first phase of Soros's Purple Revolution in America.
President-elect Trump is facing a two-pronged attack by his opponents. One, led by entrenched neo-con bureaucrats, including former
Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff,
and Bush family loyalists are seeking to call the shots on who Trump appoints to senior national security, intelligence, foreign
policy, and defense positions in his administration. These neo-Cold Warriors are trying to convince Trump that he must maintain the
Obama aggressiveness and militancy toward Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries. The second front arrayed against
Trump is from Soros-funded political groups and media. This second line of attack is a propaganda war, utilizing hundreds of anti-Trump
newspapers, web sites, and broadcasters, that will seek to undermine public confidence in the Trump administration from its outset.
One of Trump's political advertisements, released just prior to Election Day, stated that George Soros, Federal Reserve chair
Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, are all part of "a global power structure that is responsible
for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets
of a handful of large corporations and political entities". Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as
"anti-Semitic". President Trump should be on guard against those who his campaign called out in the ad and their colleagues. Soros's
son, Alexander Soros, called on Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, to publicly disavow Trump. Soros's tactics
not only seek to split apart nations but also families. Trump must be on guard against the current and future machinations of George
Soros, including his Purple Revolution.
"It is doubtful that President Trump's aides will advise the new president to carry out a diversionary criminal investigation
of Mrs. Clinton's private email servers and other issues related to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, especially when
the nation faces so many other pressing issues, including jobs, immigration, and health care."
None of those "pressing issues" involve the DOJ or the FBI.
Investigate, prosecute and jail Hillary Clinton and her crew.
Trump is going to need a hostage or two to deal with these fucks.
News for the Clintons, The R's and D's already united to vote against Hillary.
I do not understand why they think street protests will bring down a POTUS? And that would be acceptable in a major nation.
Why isn't the government cracking down the separatists in Oregon, California, and elsewhere? They are not accepting the legal
outcome of an election. They are calling for illegal secession. (Funny in 1861 this was a cause for the federal government to
attack the joint and seveal states of the union.) If a group of whites had protested Obama's election in 2008?
The people living in Kalispell are reviled and ridiculed for their separatist views. Randy Weaver and family for not accepting
politically correct views. And so on.
This is getting out of hand. There will be no walking this back.
"Yes. And who are the neocons really? Progressives. Neocon is a label successfully used by criminal progressives to shield their
brand."
Well let's go a little bit deeper in examing the 'who' thing:
"The neoconservative movement, which is generally perceived as a radical (rather than "conservative") Republican right, is, in
reality, an intellectual movement born in the late 1960s in the pages of the monthly magazine Commentary , a media arm of the American
Jewish Committee , which had replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945. The Forward , the oldest American Jewish weekly, wrote
in a January 6th, 2006 article signed Gal Beckerman: " If there is an intellectual movement in America to whose invention Jews can
lay sole claim, neoconservatism is it.... "
The idea of arresting the Clinton Crime, Fraud and Crime Family would be welcomed. BUT, who is going to arrest them? Loretta Lynch,
James Comey, WHO? The problem here is that our so called "authorities" are all in the same bed. The tentacles of the Eastern Elite
Establishment are everywhere in high office, academia, the media, Big Business, etc. The swamp is thoroughly infested with this
elite scum of those in the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, Chatham House, Club of Rome,
Committee of 300, Jason Society and numerous other private clubs of the rich, powerful and influential. The Illuminati has been
exposed, however they aren't going down lightly. They still have massive amounts of money, they own the media and the banking
houses. Some have described it as MIMAC, the Military Industrial Media Academic Complex. A few months ago here at Zero Hedge,
there was an article which showed a massive flow chart of the elites and their organization
They could IF and WHEN Trump gets to Washington after 20 Jan 2017, simply implode the economy and blame t it on Trump. Sort
of what happened to Herbert Hoover in the late 1920's. Unfortunately the situation in the US will continue to deteriorate. George
Soros, a major financial backer of Hillary will see to that. Soros is a Globalist and advocate of one world government. People
comment that Soros should be arrested. I agree, BUT who is going to do that?
Agree. I think Trump will yank all the "aid" to Israel as well as "aid" to the Islamic murderers of the Palitrashian human garbage
infesting the area. This "aid" money is simply a bribe to keep both from killing each other. F**k all of them. None of our business
what they do.
We got progressives ( lots and lots of Jews in that group) who are the enemy of mankind and then we got Islam who are also
the enemy of mankind. Why help either of them? Makes no sense.
Soros is hated in Israel and has never set foot there but his foundations have done such harm that a bill was recently passed
to ban foreign funding of non profit political organizations
The fact that we all have to worry about the CIA killing a President Elect simply because the man puts America first, really says
it all.
The Agency is Cancer. Why are we even waiting for them to kill another one of our people to act? There should be no question
about the CIA's future in the US.
Dissolved & dishonored. Its members locked away or punished for Treason. Their reputation is so bad and has been for so long,
that the fact that you joined them should be enough to justify arrest and Execution for Treason, Crimes Against Humanity & Crimes
Against The American People.
There are entirely way too many Intelligence Agencies. Plus the Contractors, some of who shouldn't have high level clearance to
begin with which the US sub contracts the Intel / work out to.
For Fucks sake, Government is so incompetent it can't even handle it own Intel.
Something along the lines of Eurpoe's Five Eyes would be highly effective.
Fuck those Pure Evil Psychopaths at the CIA They're nothing more than a bunch of Scum Fuck murdering, drug running, money laundering
Global Crime Syndicate.
The FBI is still investigating the Clinton Foundation, Trump needs to encourage that through backdoor channels. Soro's needs to
be investigated, he has been tied to a conspiracy to incite violence, this needs to be documented and dealt with. Trump can not
ignore this guy. If any of these investigations come back with a recommendation to indict then that process needs to be started.
Take the fight to them, they are vulnerable!
Make a National APB Warrent for the apprehension & arrest of George Sooros for inciting violence, endsrgerimg the public & calling
for the murder of our Nations Police through funding of the BLM Group.
Have every Law Informent Agency in the Nation on alert. Also, issue a Bounty in the Sum of $5,000,000 for his immediate apprehension.
Trump needs to replace FBI chickenshits & sellouts with loyal people then get the FBI counter-terrorism to investigate and shut
down Soros & the various agencies instigating the riots. It's really simple when you quit over-thinking a problem. It's domestic
terrorism. It's the FBI's job to stop it.
I read what Paul said this morning and thought, despite Paul's hostility to Trump during the primaries most likely due to his
son, Rand's loss, that Paul gave good advice to Trump.
Let's face it Donald Trump is a STOP GAP measure. And demographic change over the next 4 years makes his re-election very, very
UNLIKELY. If he keeps his campaign promises he will be a GREAT president. However as ZH reported earlier he appears to be balking
from repealing Obamacare, I stress the word APPEARS.
Let us give him a chance. This is all speculation. His enemies are DEADLY as they were once they got total control in Russia,
they killed according to Solzhenitsyn SIXTY-SIX MILLION Russian Christians. The descendants of those Bolsheviks are VERY powerful
in the USSA. They control the Fed, Hollyweird, Wall Street, the universities...
Much of the media and advertising exist by pushing buttons that trigger appropriate financially lucrative reflexes in their
audiences, from pornography to romantic movies to team sports. Media profits are driven by competition over how best to push
those buttons. But the effort to produce politically and racially cuckolded Whites adds a layer of complexity: What buttons
do you push to make Whites complicit in their own racial and cultural demise?
Actually, there are a whole lot of them, which shouldn't be surprising. This is a very sophisticated onslaught, enabled
by control over all the moral, intellectual, and political high ground by the left. With all that high ground, there are a
lot of buttons you can push.
Our enemies see this as a pathetic last gasp of a moribund civilization and it is quite true for our civilization is dying.
Identity Christians describe this phase as Jacob's Troubles and what the secular Guillaume Faye would, I think, describe as the
catastrophe required to get people motivated. The future has yet to be written, however I cannot help but think that God's people,
the White people, are stirring from their slumber.
"PNAC: Project for New American Century. The main neocon lobby, it focused first on invading Iraq. Founded 1997, by William
Kristol & Robert Kagan. First action: open letter to Clinton advocating Iraq war. Members in the Iraq-War clique: Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz, Feith, BOLTON, Libby, Abrams, Wurmser, Perle.
JINSA, The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. "explaining the link between U.S. national security and Israel's
security" Served on JINSA's Advisory Board: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, BOLTON, Perle."
If Trump has probable cause on the Soros crimes, have his DoJ request a warrant for all of Soros's communications via the NSA,
empanel a grand jury, indict the bastard, and throw his raggedy ass in prison. It would be hard for him to run his retarded purple
revolution when he's getting ass-raped by his cell mate.
I agree. Thing is, I think as president he can simply order the NSA to cough up whatever they have, just like Obama could have
done at any point. The NSA is part of the Defense Department, right? What am I missing here?
But in respect to Soro's money and the Dalas shooting or other incited events, there should be a grand jury empanelled and
then charges brought against him. I think nothing short of him hiding in an embassy with all his money blocked by Swift is justice
for the violence that he funded.
It is doubtful that President Trump's aides will advise the new president to carry out a diversionary criminal investigation
of Mrs. Clinton's private email servers and other issues related to the activities of the Clinton Foundation, especially when
the nation faces so many other pressing issues, including jobs, immigration, and health care. However, House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz said he will continue hearings in the Republican-controlled Congress on
Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and Mrs. Clinton's aide Huma Abedin. President Trump should not allow himself to be
distracted by these efforts. Chaffetz was not one of Trump's most loyal supporters.
And so it begins; I really hope that this is just some misinformation/disinformation, because HE PROMISED he would appoint
a special prosecutor, PROMISED...
The likes of Bill Kristol, Ben Shapiro and Jonah Goldberg get to catch up on their Torah for the forseeable future but the likes
of Lloyd Blankfein will probably get to entertain the court since they have probably crossed paths doing business in NYC. The
"real conservative" deeply introspective, examine-my-conscience crowd screwed themselves to the wall, god love them.
Trump should reverse the McCain Feingold bill. That would take some wind out of Soros' sails, at least temporarily because
that was Soros' bill. He wanted campaign finance reform which actually meant that he wanted to control campaign finance through
501C3 groups, or foundations such as Open Society, Moveon.org, Ella Baker society, Center for American progress, etc. He has a
massive web of these organizations and they fund smaller ones and all kinds of evil.
We know so little about Trump ... he's neoCon friendly to start with (remember he hired neoCon Grandee James Woolsey as an
advisor)... and remember too Trump is promising his own war against Iran ... (just in case you confused him with Mother Theresa)..
But then again JFK took office with a set of initiatives that were far more bellicose and provocative (like putting huge Jupiter
missile launchers on the USSR border in Turkey)... once he saw he light and fired the pro Nazi Dulles Gang , JFK was gunned
down in front of the whole world.
If Trump really is a nationalist patriot he'll need to innoculate the Population about the Deep State... they in turn will
unleash financial disintegration and chaos, a Purple Revolution and then assassinate Trump (or have his own party impeach him)
I'm guessing though that deep down Trump is quite comfortable with a neoCon cabinet... hell he already offered Jamie Diamon
the office of Treasry Secretary... no doubt a calculated gesture to signal compliance with the Deep State.
The Clintons do not do things by accident. Coordination of colors at the concession speech was meant for something. Perhaps the
purple revolution or maybe they want to be seen as royals. It doesn't really matter why they did it; the fact is they are up to
something. They will not agree to go away and even if they offered to just disappear with their wealth we know they are dishonest.
They will come back... that is what they do.
They must be stripped of power and wealth. This act must be performed publicly.
In order to succeed Mr. Trump I suggest you task a group to accomplish this result. Your efforts to make America great again
may disintegrate just like Obamacare if you allow the Clintons and Co. to languish in the background.
The protestors are groups of individuals who may seek association for any number of reasons. One major reason might be the loss
of hope for a meaningful and prosperous life. We should seek out and listen to the individuals within these groups. If they are
truly desirous of being heard they will communicate what they want without use of violence. Perhaps individuals join these protest
groups because they do not have a voice.
Organizing a means to receive the protestors' complaints may co-opt any organized effort to disrupt good political interaction
and it will also separate out the bad elements cited by Madsen.
The articles reporting that Mr. Trump has changed his response to the protestors is a good effort to discover the protestors'
complaints and channel their energy into beneficial political activity. Something must be done quickly though, before the protests
get out of hand, for if that happens the protestors will be criminals and no one will want to work with them.
In order to make America great again we need input from all of America. Mr. Trump you can harness the energy of these protestors
and let them know they are a part of your movement.
Classical economists are experts on today's capitalism, it is 18th and 19th Century capitalism, it's how it all started.
Adam Smith would think we are on the road to ruin.
"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society.
On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going
fastest to ruin."
Exactly the opposite of today's thinking, what does he mean?
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalizing itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services.
Got that wrong as well.
Adam Smith wouldn't like today's lobbyists.
"The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great
precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous,
but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of
the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions,
both deceived and oppressed it."
First five minutes of Alex Jones' video today is clips of people saying "Donald Trump will never be president". Full Show - Soros-Funded Goons Deployed to Overthrow America - 11/11/2016
AMERICAN SPRING: She practiced overseas in Tunisia, Algeria, Oman, Jordan, Libya, Egypt... Now it's time to apply the knowledge
in her own country!
lakecity55 -> CoCosAB •Nov 12, 2016 7:53 AM
Really good chance these subversive operations will continue. Soros has plenty of money. Trump will have to do some rough stuff,
but he needs to, it's what we hired him for.
Junk author, junk book of the butcher of Yugoslavia who would be hanged with Bill clinton by
Nuremberg Tribunal for crimes against peace. Albright is not bright at all. she a female bully
and that shows.
Mostly projection. And this arrogant warmonger like to exercise in Russophobia (which was the
main part of the USSR which saved the world fro fascism, sacrificing around 20 million people)
This book is book of denial of genocide against Iraqis and Serbian population where bombing with
uranium enriched bombs doubled cancer cases.If you can pass over those facts that this book is
for you.
Like Robert Kagan and other neocons Albright is waiving authoritarism dead chicken again and
again. that's silly and disingenuous. authoritarism is a method of Governance used in military.
It is not an ideology. Fascism is an ideology, a flavor of far right nationalism. Kind of
"enhanced" by some socialist ideas far right nationalism.
The view of fascism without economic circumstances that create fascism, and first of
immiseration of middle and working class and high level of unemployment is a primitive
ahistorical view. Fascism is the ultimate capitalist statism acting simultaneously as the civil
religion for the population also enforced by the power of the state. It has a lot of common with
neoliberalism, that's why neoliberalism is sometimes called "inverted totalitarism".
In reality fascism while remaining the dictatorship of capitalists for capitalist and the
national part of financial oligarchy, it like neoliberalism directed against working class
fascism comes to power on the populist slogans of righting wrong by previous regime and kicking
foreign capitalists and national compradors (which in Germany turned to be mostly Jewish)
out.
It comes to power under the slogans of stopping the distribution of wealth up and elimination
of the class of reinters -- all citizens should earn income, not get it from bond and other
investments (often in reality doing completely the opposite).
While intrinsically connected and financed by a sizable part of national elite which often
consist of far right military leadership, a part of financial oligarchy and large part of lower
middle class (small properties) is is a protest movement which want to revenge for the
humiliation and prefer military style organization of the society to democracy as more potent
weapon to achieve this goal.
Like any far right movement the rise of fascism and neo-fascism is a sign of internal problem
within a given society, often a threat to the state or social order.
Still another noted that Fascism is often linked to people who are part of a distinct ethnic
or racial group, who are under economic stress, and who feel that they are being denied rewards
to which they are entitled. "It's not so much what people have." she said, "but what they think
they should have -- and what they fear." Fear is why Fascism's emotional reach can extend to
all levels of society. No political movement can flourish without popular support, but Fascism
is as dependent on the wealthy and powerful as it is on the man or woman in the street -- on
those who have much to lose and those who have nothing at all.
This insight made us think that Fascism should perhaps be viewed less as a political
ideology than as a means for seizing and holding power. For example, Italy in the 1920s
included self-described Fascists of the left (who advocated a dictatorship of the
dispossessed), of the right (who argued for an authoritarian corporatist state), and of the
center (who sought a return to absolute monarchy). The German National Socialist Party (the
Nazis) originally came together ar ound a list of demands that ca- tered to anti-Semites,
anti-immigrants, and anti-capitalists but also advocated for higher old-age pensions, more
educational op- portunities for the poor, an end to child labor, and improved ma- ternal health
care. The Nazis were racists and, in their own minds, reformers at the same time.
If Fascism concerns itself less with specific policies than with finding a pathway to power,
what about the tactics of lead- ership? My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remem-
ber best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to
the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the
sur- face. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democ- racy. Unlike a monarchy
or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above. Fascism draws energy from men and
women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of hu- miliation, or a sense
that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier
it is for a Fascist leader to gam followers by dangling the prospect of re- newal or by vowing
to take back what has been stolen.
Like the mobilizers of more benign movements, these secular evangelists exploit the
near-universal human desire to be part of a meaningful quest. The more gifted among them have
an apti- tude for spectacle -- for orchestrating mass gatherings complete with martial music,
incendiary rhetoric, loud cheers, and arm-
lifting salutes. To loyalists, they offer the prize of membership in a club from which
others, often the objects of ridicule, are kept out. To build fervor, Fascists tend to be
aggressive, militaristic, and -- when circumstances allow -- expansionist. To secure the
future, they turn schools into seminaries for true believers, striv- ing to produce "new men"
and "new women" who will obey without question or pause. And, as one of my students observed,
"a Fascist who launches his career by being voted into office will have a claim to legitimacy
that others do not."
After climbing into a position of power, what comes next: How does a Fascist consolidate
authority? Here several students piped up: "By controlling information." Added another, "And
that's one reason we have so much cause to worry today." Most of us have thought of the
technological revolution primarily as a means for people from different walks of life to
connect with one another, trade ideas, and develop a keener understanding of why men and women
act as they do -- in other words, to sharpen our perceptions of truth. That's still the case,
but now we are not so sure. There is a troubling "Big Brother" angle because of the mountain of
personal data being uploaded into social media. If an advertiser can use that information to
home in on a consumer because of his or her individual interests, what's to stop a Fascist
government from doing the same? "Suppose I go to a demonstra- tion like the Women's March,"
said a student, "and post a photo
on social media. My name gets added to a list and that list can end up anywhere. How do we
protect ourselves against that?"
Even more disturbing is the ability shown by rogue regimes and their agents to spread lies
on phony websites and Facebook. Further, technology has made it possible for extremist
organiza- tions to construct echo chambers of support for conspiracy theo- ries, false
narratives, and ignorant views on religion and race. This is the first rule of deception:
repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible. The
Internet should be an ally of freedom and a gateway to knowledge; in some cases, it is
neither.
Historian Robert Paxton begins one of his books by assert- ing: "Fascism was the major
political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain." Over the
years, he and other scholars have developed lists of the many moving parts that Fascism
entails. Toward the end of our discussion, my class sought to articulate a comparable list.
Fascism, most of the students agreed, is an extreme form of authoritarian rule. Citizens are
required to do exactly what lead- ers say they must do, nothing more, nothing less. The
doctrine is linked to rabid nationalism. It also turns the traditional social contract upside
down. Instead of citizens giving power to the state in exchange for the protection of their
rights, power begins with the leader, and the people have no rights. Under Fascism,
the mission of citizens is to serve; the government's job is to rule.
When one talks about this subject, confusion often arises about the difference between
Fascism and such related concepts as totalitarianism, dictatorship, despotism, tyranny,
autocracy, and so on. As an academic, I might be tempted to wander into that thicket, but as a
former diplomat, I am primarily concerned with actions, not labels. To my mind, a Fascist is
someone who identifies strongly with and claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is
unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use whatever means are necessary --
including violence -- to achieve his or her goals. In that conception, a Fascist will likely be
a tyrant, but a tyrant need not be a Fascist.
Often the difference can be seen in who is trusted with the guns. In seventeenth-century
Europe, when Catholic aristocrats did battle with Protestant aristocrats, they fought over
scripture but agreed not to distribute weapons to their peasants, thinking it safer to wage war
with mercenary armies. Modern dictators also tend to be wary of their citizens, which is why
they create royal guards and other elite security units to ensure their personal safe- ty. A
Fascist, however, expects the crowd to have his back. Where kings try to settle people down,
Fascists stir them up so that when the fighting begins, their foot soldiers have the will and
the firepower to strike first.
Hypocrisy at its worst from a lady who advocated hawkish foreign policy which included the
most sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam, when, in 1998, Clinton began almost daily
attacks on Iraq in the so-called no-fly zones, and made so-called regime change in Iraq
official U.S. policy.
In May of 1996, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Madeleine Albright, who at the time was
Clinton's U.N. ambassador. Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, in connection with
the Clinton administration presiding over the most devastating regime of sanctions in history
that the U.N. estimated took the lives of as many as a million Iraqis, the vast majority of
them children. , "We have heard that a half-million children have died. I mean, that's more
children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and, you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think
the price is worth it.
While I found much of the story-telling in "Fascism" engaging, I come away expecting much
more of one of our nation's pre-eminent senior diplomats . In a nutshell, she has devoted a
whole volume to describing the ascent of intolerant fascism and its many faces, but punted on
the question "How should we thwart fascism going forward?"
Even that question leaves me a bit unsatisfied, since it is couched in double-negative
syntax. The thing there is an appetite for, among the readers of this book who are looking
for more than hand-wringing about neofascism, is a unifying title or phrase which captures in
single-positive syntax that which Albright prefers over fascism. What would that be? And, how
do we pursue it, nurture it, spread it and secure it going forward? What is it?
I think Albright would perhaps be willing to rally around "Good Government" as the theme
her book skirts tangentially from the dark periphery of fascistic government. "Virtuous
Government"? "Effective Government"? "Responsive Government"?
People concerned about neofascism want to know what we should be doing right now to avoid
getting sidetracked into a dark alley of future history comparable to the Nazi brown shirt or
Mussolini black shirt epochs. Does Albright present a comprehensive enough understanding of
fascism to instruct on how best to avoid it? Or, is this just another hand-wringing exercise,
a la "you'll know it when you see it", with a proactive superficiality stuck at the level of
pejorative labelling of current styles of government and national leaders? If all you can say
is what you don't want, then the challenge of threading the political future of the US is
left unruddered. To make an analogy to driving a car, if you don't know your destination, and
only can get navigational prompts such as "don't turn here" or "don't go down that street",
then what are the chances of arriving at a purposive destination?
The other part of this book I find off-putting is that Albright, though having served as
Secretary of State, never talks about the heavy burden of responsibility that falls on a head
of state. She doesn't seem to empathize at all with the challenge of top leadership. Her
perspective is that of the detached critic. For instance, in discussing President Duterte of
the Philippines, she fails to paint the dire situation under which he rose to national
leadership responsibility: Islamic separatists having violently taken over the entire city of
Marawi, nor the ubiquitous spread of drug cartel power to the level where control over law
enforcement was already ceded to the gangs in many places...entire islands and city
neighborhoods run by mafia organizations. It's easy to sit back and criticize Duterte's
unleashing of vigilante justice -- What was Mrs. Albright's better alternative to regain
ground from vicious, well-armed criminal organizations? The distancing from leadership
responsibility makes Albright's treatment of the Philippines twin crises of gang-rule and
Islamist revolutionaries seem like so much academic navel-gazing....OK for an undergrad
course at Georgetown maybe, but unworthy of someone who served in a position of high
responsibility. Duterte is liked in the Philippines. What he did snapped back the power of
the cartels, and returned a deserved sense of security to average Philippinos (at least those
not involved with narcotics). Is that not good government, given the horrendous circumstances
Duterte came up to deal with? What lack of responsibility in former Philippine leadership
allowed things to get so out of control? Is it possible that Democrats and liberals are
afraid to be tough, when toughness is what is needed? I'd much rather read an account from an
average Philippino about the positive impacts of the vigilante campaign, than listen of
Madame Secretary sermonizing out of context about Duterte. OK, he's not your idea of a nice
guy. Would you rather sit back, prattle on about the rule of law and due process while
Islamic terrorists wrest control over where you live? Would you prefer the leadership of a
drug cartel boss to Duterte?
My critique is offered in a constructive manner. I would certainly encourage Albright (or
anyone!) to write a book in a positive voice about what it's going to take to have good
national government in the US going forward, and to help spread such abundance globally. I
would define "good" as the capability to make consistently good policy decisions, ones that
continue to look good in hindsight, 10, 20 or 30 years later. What does that take?
I would submit that the essential "preserving democracy" process component is having a
population that is adequately prepared for collaborative problem-solving. Some understanding
of history is helpful, but it's simply not enough. Much more essential is for every young
person to experience team problem-solving, in both its cooperative and competitive aspects.
Every young person needs to experience a team leadership role, and to appreciate what it
takes from leaders to forge constructive design from competing ideas and champions. Only
after serving as a referee will a young person understand the limits to "passion" that
individual contributors should bring to the party. Only after moderating and herding cats
will a young person know how to interact productively with leaders and other contributors.
Much of the skill is counter-instinctual. It's knowing how to express ideas...how to field
criticism....how to nudge people along in the desired direction...and how to avoid ad-hominem
attacks, exaggerations, accusations and speculative grievances. It's learning how to manage
conflict productively toward excellence. Way too few of our young people are learning these
skills, and way too few of our journalists know how to play a constructive role in managing
communications toward successful complex problem-solving. Albright's claim that a
journalist's job is primarily to "hold leaders accountable" really betrays an absolving of
responsibility for the media as a partner in good government -- it doesn't say whether the
media are active players on the problem-solving team (which they have to be for success), or
mere spectators with no responsibility for the outcome. If the latter, then journalism
becomes an irritant, picking at the scabs over and over, but without any forward progress.
When the media takes up a stance as an "opponent" of leadership, you end up with poor
problem-solving results....the system is fighting itself instead of making forward
progress.
"Fascism" doesn't do nearly enough to promote the teaching of practical civics 101 skills,
not just to the kids going into public administration, but to everyone. For, it is in the
norms of civility, their ability to be practiced, and their defense against excesses, that
fascism (e.g., Antifa) is kept at bay.
Everyone in a democracy has to know the basics:
• when entering a disagreement, don't personalize it
• never demonize an opponent
• keep a focus on the goal of agreement and moving forward
• never tell another person what they think, but ask (non-rhetorically) what they think
then be prepared to listen and absorb
• do not speak untruths or exaggerate to make an argument
• do not speculate grievance
• understand truth gathering as a process; detect when certainty is being bluffed;
question sources
• recognize impasse and unproductive argumentation and STOP IT
• know how to introduce a referee or moderator to regain productive collaboration
• avoid ad hominem attacks
• don't take things personally that wrankle you;
• give the benefit of the doubt in an ambiguous situation
• don't jump to conclusions
• don't reward theatrical manipulation
These basics of collaborative problem-solving are the guts of a "liberal democracy" that
can face down the most complex challenges and dilemmas.
I gave the book 3 stars for the great story-telling, and Albright has been part of a great
story of late 20th century history. If she would have told us how to prevent fascism going
forward, and how to roll it back in "hard case" countries like North Korea and Sudan, I would
have given her a 5. I'm not that interested in picking apart the failure cases of
history...they teach mostly negative exemplars. Much rather I would like to read about
positive exemplars of great national government -- "great" defined by popular acclaim, by the
actual ones governed. Where are we seeing that today? Canada? Australia? Interestingly, both
of these positive exemplars have strict immigration policies.
Is it possible that Albright is just unable, by virtue of her narrow escape from Communist
Czechoslovakia and acceptance in NYC as a transplant, to see that an optimum immigration
policy in the US, something like Canada's or Australia's, is not the looming face of fascism,
but rather a move to keep it safely in its corner in coming decades? At least, she admits to
her being biased by her life story.
That suggests her views on refugees and illegal immigrants as deserving of unlimited
rights to migrate into the US might be the kind of cloaked extremism that she is warning us
about.
Albright's book is a comprehensive look at recent history regarding the rise and fall of
fascist leaders; as well as detailing leaders in nations that are starting to mimic fascist
ideals. Instead of a neat definition, she uses examples to bolster her thesis of what are
essential aspects of fascism. Albright dedicates each section of the book to a leader or
regime that enforces fascist values and conveys this to the reader through historical events
and exposition while also peppering in details of her time as Secretary of State. The climax
(and 'warning'), comes at the end, where Albright applies what she has been discussing to the
current state of affairs in the US and abroad.
Overall, I would characterize this as an enjoyable and relatively easy read. I think the
biggest strength of this book is how Albright uses history, previous examples of leaders and
regimes, to demonstrate what fascism looks like and contributing factors on a national and
individual level. I appreciated that she lets these examples speak for themselves of the
dangers and subtleties of a fascist society, which made the book more fascinating and less of
a textbook. Her brief descriptions of her time as Secretary of State were intriguing and made
me more interested in her first book, 'Madame Secretary'. The book does seem a bit slow as it
is not until the end that Albright blatantly reveals the relevance of all of the history
relayed in the first couple hundred pages. The last few chapters are dedicated to the reveal:
the Trump administration and how it has affected global politics. Although, she never
outright calls Trump a fascist, instead letting the reader decide based on his decisions and
what you have read in the book leading up to this point, her stance is quite clear by the
end. I was surprised at what I shared politically with Albright, mainly in immigration and a
belief of empathy and understanding for others. However, I got a slight sense of
anti-secularism in the form of a disdain for those who do not subscribe to an Abrahamic
religion and she seemed to hint at this being partly an opening to fascism.
I also could have done without the both-sides-ism she would occasionally push, which seems
to be a tactic used to encourage people to 'unite against Trump'. These are small annoyances
I had with the book, my main critique is the view Albright takes on democracy. If anything,
the book should have been called "Democracy: the Answer" because that is the most consistent
stance Albright takes throughout. She seems to overlook many of the atrocities the US and
other nations have committed in the name of democracy and the negative consequences of
capitalism, instead, justifying negative actions with the excuse of 'it is for democracy and
everyone wants that' and criticizing those who criticize capitalism.
She does not do a good job of conveying the difference between a communist country like
Russia and a socialist country like those found in Scandinavia and seems okay with the idea
of the reader lumping them all together in a poor light. That being said, I would still
recommend this book for anyone's TBR as the message is essential for today, that the current
world of political affairs is, at least somewhat, teetering on a precipice and we are in need
of as many strong leaders as possible who are willing to uphold democratic ideals on the
world stage and mindful constituents who will vote them in.
The book is very well written, easy to read, and follows a pretty standard formula making
it accessible to the average reader. However, it suffers immensely from, what I suspect are,
deeply ingrained political biases from the author.
Whilst I don't dispute the criteria the author applies in defining fascism, or the targets
she cites as examples, the first bias creeps in here when one realises the examples chosen
are traditional easy targets for the US (with the exception of Turkey). The same criteria
would define a country like Singapore perfectly as fascist, yet the country (or Malaysia)
does not receive a mention in the book.
Further, it grossly glosses over what Ms. Albright terms facist traits from the US
governments of the past. If the author is to be believed, the CIA is holier than thou, never
intervened anywhere or did anything that wasn't with the best interests of democracy at
heart, and American foreign policy has always existed to build friendships and help out their
buddies. To someone ingrained in this rhetoric for years I am sure this is an easy pill to
swallow, but to the rest of the world it makes a number of assertions in the book come across
as incredibly naive. out of 5 stars
Trite and opaque
We went with my husband to the presentation of this book at UPenn with Albright before it
came out and Madeleine's spunk, wit and just glorious brightness almost blinded me. This is a
2.5 star book, because 81 year old author does not really tell you all there is to tell when
she opens up on a subject in any particular chapter, especially if it concerns current US
interest.
Lets start from the beginning of the book. What really stood out, the missing 3rd Germany
ally, Japan and its emperor. Hirohito (1901-1989) was emperor of Japan from 1926 until his
death in 1989. He took over at a time of rising democratic sentiment, but his country soon
turned toward ultra-nationalism and militarism. During World War II (1939-45), Japan attacked
nearly all of its Asian neighbors, allied itself with Nazi Germany and launched a surprise
assault on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, forcing US to enter the war in 1941. Hirohito
was never indicted as a war criminal! does he deserve at least a chapter in her book?
Oh and by the way, did author mention anything about sanctions against Germany for
invading Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland? Up until the Pearl Harbor USA and
Germany still traded, although in March 1939, FDR slapped a 25% tariff on all German goods.
Like Trump is doing right now to some of US trading partners.
Next monster that deserves a chapter on Genocide in cosmic proportions post WW2 is
communist leader of China Mao Zedung. Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural
history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic
torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants compares to the Second World
War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in
China over these four years; the total worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55
million.
We learn that Argentina has given sanctuary to Nazi war criminals, but she forgets to
mention that 88 Nazi scientists arrived in the United States in 1945 and were promptly put to
work. For example, Wernher von Braun was the brains behind the V-2 rocket program, but had
intimate knowledge of what was going on in the concentration camps. Von Braun himself
hand-picked people from horrific places, including Buchenwald concentration camp. Tsk-Tsk
Madeline.
What else? Oh, lets just say that like Madelaine Albright my husband is Jewish and lost
extensive family to Holocoust. Ukrainian nationalists executed his great grandfather on
gistapo orders, his great grandmother disappeared in concentration camp, grandfather was
conscripted in june 1940 and decommissioned september 1945 and went through war as
infantryman through 3 fronts earning several medals. his grandmother, an ukrainian born jew
was a doctor in a military hospital in Saint Petersburg survived famine and saved several
children during blockade. So unlike Maideline who was raised as a Roman Catholic, my husband
grew up in a quiet jewish family in that territory that Stalin grabbed from Poland in 1939,
in a polish turn ukrainian city called Lvov(Lemberg). His family also had to ask for an
asylum, only they had to escape their home in Ukraine in 1991. He was told then "You are a
nice little Zid (Jew), we will kill you last" If you think things in ukraine changed, think
again, few weeks ago in Kiev Roma gypsies were killed and injured during pogroms, and nobody
despite witnesses went to jail. Also during demonstrations openly on the streets C14 unit is
waving swastikas and Heils. Why is is not mentioned anywhere in the book? is is because
Hunter Biden sits on the board of one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies called
Burisma since May 14, 2014, and Ukraine has an estimated 127.9 trillion cubic feet of
unproved technically recoverable shale gas resources? ( according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA).1 The most promising shale reserves appear to be in the
Carpathian Foreland Basin (also called the Lviv-Volyn Basin), which extends across Western
Ukraine from Poland into Romania, and the Dnieper-Donets Basin in the East (which borders
Russia).
Wow, i bet you did not know that. how ugly are politics, even this book that could have been
so much greater if the author told the whole ugly story. And how scary that there are
countries where you can go and openly be fascist.
To me, Fascism fails for the single reason that no two fascist leaders are alike. Learning
about one or a few, in a highly cursory fashion like in this book or in great detail, is
unlikely to provide one with any answers on how to prevent the rise of another or fend
against some such. And, as much as we are witnessing the rise of numerous democratic or
quasi-democratic "strongmen" around the world in global politics, it is difficult to brand
any of them as fascist in the orthodox sense.
As the author writes at the outset, it is difficult to separate a fascist from a tyrant or
a dictator. A fascist is a majoritarian who rouses a large group under some national, racial
or similar flag with rallying cries demanding suppression or exculcation of those excluded
from this group. A typical fascist leader loves her yes-men and hates those who disagree: she
does not mind using violence to suppress dissidents. A fascist has no qualms using propaganda
to popularize the agreeable "facts" and theories while debunking the inconvenient as lies.
What is not discussed explicitly in the book are perhaps some positive traits that separate
fascists from other types of tyrants: fascists are rarely lazy, stupid or prone to doing
things for only personal gains. They differ from the benevolent dictators for their record of
using heavy oppression against their dissidents. Fascists, like all dictators, change rules
to suit themselves, take control of state organizations to exercise total control and use
"our class is the greatest" and "kick others" to fuel their programs.
Despite such a detailed list, each fascist is different from each other. There is little
that even Ms Albright's fascists - from Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin to the Kims to Chavez
or Erdogan - have in common. In fact, most of the opponents of some of these
dictators/leaders would calll them by many other choice words but not fascists. The
circumstances that gave rise to these leaders were highly different and so were their rules,
methods and achievements.
The point, once again, is that none of the strongmen leaders around the world could be
easily categorized as fascists. Or even if they do, assigning them with such a tag and
learning about some other such leaders is unlikely to help. The history discussed in the book
is interesting but disjointed, perfunctory and simplistic. Ms Albright's selection is also
debatable.
Strong leaders who suppress those they deem as opponents have wreaked immense harms and
are a threat to all civil societies. They come in more shades and colours than terms we have
in our vocabulary (dictators, tyrants, fascists, despots, autocrats etc). A study of such
tyrant is needed for anyone with an interest in history, politics, or societal well-being.
Despite Ms Albright's phenomenal knowledge, experience, credentials, personal history and
intentions, this book is perhaps not the best place to objectively learn much about the risks
from the type of things some current leaders are doing or deeming as right.
Each time I get concerned about Trump's rhetoric or past actions I read idiotic opinions,
like those of our second worst ever Secretary of State, and come to appreciate him more.
Pejorative terms like fascism or populism have no place in a rational policy discussion. Both
are blatant attempts to apply a pejorative to any disagreeing opinion. More than half of the
book is fluffed with background of Albright, Hitler and Mussolini. Wikipedia is more
informative. The rest has snippets of more modern dictators, many of whom are either
socialists or attained power through a reaction to failed socialism, as did Hitler. She
squirms mightily to liken Trump to Hitler. It's much easier to see that Sanders is like
Maduro. The USA is following a path more like Venezuela than Germany.
Her history misses that Mussolini was a socialist before he was a fascist, and Nazism in
Germany was a reaction to Wiemar socialism. The danger of fascism in the US is far greater
from the left than from the right. America is far left of where the USSR ever was. Remember
than Marx observed that Russia was not ready for a proletarian revolution. The USA with ready
made capitalism for reform fits Marx's pattern much better. Progressives deny that Sanders
and Warren are socialists. If not they are what Lenin called "useful idiots."
Albright says that she is proud of the speech where she called the USA the 'Indispensable
Nation.' She should be ashamed. Obama followed in his inaugural address, saying that we are
"the indispensable nation, responsible for world security." That turned into a policy of
human rights interventions leading to open ended wars (Syria, Yemen), nations in chaos
(Libya), and distrust of the USA (Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, NK). Trump now has
to make nice with dictators to allay their fears that we are out to replace them.
She admires the good intentions of human rights intervention, ignoring the results. She says
Obama had some success without citing a single instance. He has apologized for Libya, but
needs many more apologies. She says Obama foreign policy has had some success, with no
mention of a single instance. Like many progressives, she confuses good intentions with
performance. Democracy spreading by well intentioned humanitarian intervention has resulted
in a succession of open ended war or anarchy.
The shorter histories of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Venezuela are much more
informative, although more a warning against socialism than right wing fascism. Viktor Orban
in Hungary is another reaction to socialism.
Albright ends the book with a forlorn hope that we need a Lincoln or Mandela, exactly what
our two party dictatorship will not generate as it yields ever worse and worse candidates for
our democracy to vote upon, even as our great society utopia generates ever more power for
weak presidents to spend our money and continue wrong headed foreign policy.
The greatest danger to the USA is not fascism, but of excessively poor leadership
continuing our slow slide to the bottom.
"... It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president. And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified men who served with considerable distinction. ..."
"... To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only gets you so far. Governing matters. ..."
"... But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great again. ..."
"... Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the "Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that. ..."
"... "Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom" of American capitalism vis-à-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism." ..."
"... Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line up with the agreed-upon party line. ..."
The Trump Administration http://tws.io/2iFd3rC
via @WeeklyStandard
Nov 28, 2016 - William Kristol
Who now gives much thought to the presidency of Warren G. Harding? Who ever did? Not us.
But let us briefly turn our thoughts to our 29th president (while stipulating that we're certainly no experts on his life or
times). Here's our summary notion: Warren G. Harding may have been a problematic president. But the Harding administration was
in some ways an impressive one, which served the country reasonably well.
It was possible to say, before Warren G. Harding was elected, that he wasn't particularly well-qualified to be president.
And he did turn out as president to have, as we say nowadays, some issues. But his administration was stocked with (mostly) well-qualified
men who served with considerable distinction.
Andrew Mellon was a successful Treasury secretary whose tax reforms and deregulatory efforts spurred years of economic growth.
Charles Dawes, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget, reduced government expenditures and, helped by Mellon's economic
policies, brought the budget into balance. Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state dealt responsibly with a very difficult
world situation his administration had inherited-though in light of what followed in the next decade, one wishes in retrospect
for bolder assertions of American leadership, though in those years just after World War I, they would have been contrary to the
national mood.
In addition, President Harding's first two Supreme Court appointments -- William Howard Taft and George Sutherland -- were
distinguished ones. And Harding personally did some admirable things: He made pronouncements, impressive in the context of that
era, in favor of racial equality; he commuted the wartime prison sentence of the Socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs. In these ways,
he contributed to an atmosphere of national healing and civility.
The brief Harding administration-and for that matter the eight years constituting his administration and that of his vice president
and successor, Calvin Coolidge-may not have been times of surpassing national greatness. But there were real achievements, especially
in the economic sphere; those years were not disastrous; they were not dark times.
President-elect Donald J. Trump probably doesn't intend to model his administration on that of President Warren G. Harding.
But he could do worse than reflect on that administration's successes-and also on its failures, particularly the scandals that
exploded into public view after Harding's sudden death. These were produced by cronies appointed by Harding to important positions,
where they betrayed his trust and tarnished his historical reputation.
Donald Trump manifestly cares about his reputation. He surely knows that reputation ultimately depends on performance. If a
Trump hotel and casino is successful, it's not because of the Trump brand-that may get people through the door the first time-but
because it provides a worthwhile experience thanks to a good management team, fine restaurants, deft croupiers, and fun shows.
If a Trump golf course succeeds, it's because it has been built and is run by people who know something about golf. The failed
Trump efforts-from the university to the steaks-seem to have in common the assumption that the Trump name by itself would be enough
to carry mediocre or worse enterprises across the finish line.
To succeed in business, the brand only gets you so far. Quality matters. To succeed in the presidency, getting elected only
gets you so far. Governing matters.
It would be ironic if Trump's very personal electoral achievement were followed by a mode of governance that restored greater
responsibility to the cabinet agencies formally entrusted with the duties of governance. It would be ironic if a Trump presidency
also featured a return of authority to Congress, the states, and to other civic institutions. It would be ironic if Trump's victory
led not to a kind of American Caesarism but to a strengthening of republican institutions and forms. It would be ironic if the
election of Donald J. Trump heralded a return to a kind of constitutional normalcy.
If we are not mistaken, it was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (though sadly unaware of the phenomena of either Warren G. Harding
or Donald J. Trump) who made much of the Irony of History.
But how Hegelian it would be if the thesis of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, followed by the antithesis of a Trump victory
over first a Bush and then a Clinton in 2016, were to produce an unanticipated synthesis: a Trump administration marked by the
reconstruction of republican normalcy in America. In its own way, that would be a genuine contribution to making America great
again.
(Harding-Coolidge-Hoover were a disastrous triumvirate that ascended to power after the Taft & Wilson administrations, as the
GOP - then the embodiment of progressivism - split apart due to the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt.)
Peter K. -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
Kristol is mad Trump lambasted the Iraq war. Was Putin against the Iraq war? I think the whole world was except for the
"Coalition of the Willing." You'll never see the UK back another war like that.
It is the neocon's taking a back seat! Kristol is co-founder of PNAC along with a Clinton mob long time foggy bottom associate's
husband.. Trump is somewhat less thrilled with tilting with Russia for the American empire which is as moral as Nero's Rome.
ilsm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , -1
Prescient: dumping Kristol's PNAC will strengthen the republic.
"Socialist feminist Liza Featherstone and others have denounced Clinton's uncritical praise of the "opportunity" and "freedom"
of American capitalism vis-à-vis other developed nations. "With this bit of frankness," Featherstone explains, referring to the
former Secretary of State's "Denmark" comments, "Clinton helpfully explained why no socialist-indeed, no non-millionaire-should
support her. She is smart enough to know that women in the United States endure far more poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity
than women in Denmark-yet she shamelessly made clear that she was happy to keep it that way." Indeed, Clinton's denunciation of
the idea that the United States should look more like Denmark betrayed one of the glaring the fault lines within the Democratic
Party, and between Clintonian liberalism and Sandersite leftism."
Is it better to ignore this fault line and try to paper it over or is it better to debate the issues in a polite and congenial
manner?
Of course the progressive neoliberals in this forum regularly resort to ad hominem to any ideas or facts that don't line
up with the agreed-upon party line.
Donald Trump's unorthodox US presidential transition continued on Monday when he held talks with one of the most prominent supporters
of leftwing Democrat Bernie Sanders.
The president-elect's first meeting of the day at Trump Tower in New York was with Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic maverick who endorsed
the socialist Sanders during his unsuccessful primary battle with Hillary Clinton.
... ... ...
At first glance Gabbard, who is from Hawaii and is the first Hindu member of the US Congress, seems an unlikely counsellor. She
resigned from the Democratic National Committee to back Vermont senator Sanders and formally nominated him for president at the party
convention in July, crediting him with starting a "movement of love and compassion", although by then Clinton's victory was certain.
But the Iraq war veteran has also expressed views that might appeal to Trump, criticising Obama, condemning interventionist wars
in Iraq and Libya and taking a hard line on immigration. In 2014, she called for a rollback of the visa waiver programme for Britain
and other European countries with what she called "Islamic extremist" populations.
In October last year she tweeted: "Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won't bomb them in Syria. Putin did.
#neverforget911." She was then among 47 Democrats who joined Republicans to pass a bill mandating a stronger screening process for
refugees from Iraq and Syria coming to the US.
Trump betrayed all and every of his main election promises, except may be building the wall. For example "Trump said that
he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse."
Notable quotes:
"... Trump said that he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse. If he sticks to his view, it means a big political change in Washington's EU vassals. The hostility toward Russia of the current EU and NATO officials would have to cease. German Chancellor Merkel would have to change her spots or be replaced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would have to be dismissed. ..."
It also remains to be seen how the Oligarchy will respond to Trump's victory. Wall Street and
the Federal Reserve can cause an economic crisis in order to put Trump on the defensive, and they
can use the crisis to force Trump to appoint one of their own as Secretary of the Treasury. Rogue
agents in the CIA and Pentagon can cause a false flag attack that would disrupt friendly relations
with Russia. Trump could make a mistake and retain neoconservatives in his government.
With Trump there is at least hope. Unless Trump is obstructed by bad judgment in his appointments
and by obstacles put in his way, we should expect an end to Washington's orchestrated conflict
with Russia, the removal of the US missiles on Russia's border with Poland and Romania, the end
of the conflict in Ukraine, and the end of Washington's effort to overthrow the Syrian government.
However, achievements such as these imply the defeat of the US Oligarchy. Although Trump defeated
Hillary, the Oligarchy still exists and is still powerful.
Trump said that he no longer sees the point of NATO 25 years after the Soviet collapse. If he sticks
to his view, it means a big political change in Washington's EU vassals. The hostility toward Russia
of the current EU and NATO officials would have to cease. German Chancellor Merkel would have to
change her spots or be replaced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg would have to be dismissed.
We do not know who Trump will select to serve in his government. It is likely that Trump is unfamiliar
with the various possibilities and their positions on issues. It really depends on who is advising
Trump and what advice they give him. Once we see his government, we will know whether we can be hopeful
for the changes that now have a chance.
If the oligarchy is unable to control Trump and he is actually successful in curbing the power
and budget of the military/security complex and in holding the financial sector politically accountable,
Trump could be assassinated.
RT correspondent Eisa Ali reports on the latest Brexit drama in the UK Parliament. Then,
economist and founder of Democracy at Work Richard Wolff joins Rick Sanchez to discuss, arguing
that the Brexit debate constitutes "an endless struggle about what doesn't matter" and that
whether the British are "in" or "out" of Europe is an irrelevant distraction from the problems
really faced by the UK.
A couple of points he makes in passing surprised me:
1) "It's why they are using the non-issue of the Irish border ..." Is it really a non-issue,
and why? Surely it is a big issue, and intrinsically explosive? Maybe I am missing something
there.
2) "The Labour party is squealing out of both sides of its mouth trying to get themselves
out of the corner they've painted themselves into. Because they can read the polls. And what
was a solid Labour lead in the winter has become a solid Tory lead in the Spring." Is it really
so that that huge Labour lead has been turned into - of all things - a Tory lead? Horror
of horrors. If true, the present day Brits are unfathomable. And what about the first part of
that citation - what about turning it around and expressing it in terms of the reality, which
is that the Labour Party consists of two wholly different, wholly contradictory, and wholly
ireconcilable parts, namely the socialist majority standing behind Corbyn and the lying fascist
corporatist right-wing 5th columnists whose sole objective is to sabotage the previous group in
every manner possible. Would perhaps a better statement be that the difference between these
two groups is being made more explicit than ever (which, I would have thought, would only
increase Corbyn's support not decrease it)? Or is that just my wishful thinking and the UK
masses are being successfully hoodwinked by the propaganda of the 2nd group as spouted by the
MSM?
Comments on those two issues anyone, from those closer to the action? (Comments from Bevin
would be especially gratefully read!)
Posted by: BM | Mar 16, 2019 9:58:53 AM |
172 ... ... ...
The other most ridiculous thing, probably moreso when you think about this Monty
Pythonesque British escapade into hillarity is the fact such grand sweeping measures are
allowed on a simple majority vote of the populace, thus ensuring approximately half the
population will detest the result no matter what.
Say what you will about the US of A-holes, and I admit nearly all of what you say is true
(except of course for the oft repeated mis-trope that Trump = US in all his venal stupidity.
No, he only represents roughly 35%...and true that is egregious enough...) at least in the US
such grand sweeping measures able to be put to a vote to the nation as a whole (iow, amending
the Constitution) either require super majority of state legislatures or a super majourity of
Congress criminals to pass.
The fact an entire nation of blooming idiots in England are where they are today is insanely
larfably and udderly absurd. Also, infotaining.
And to think Theresa May is the headliner fronting this comedy act for the ages.
All this inspired of course by the equally ridiculous US president and his chief strategist
the completely nutz Bannon.
... ... ...
Posted by: donkeytale | Mar 16, 2019 10:49:56 AM |
173@ bevin | Mar 15, 2019 3:45:05 PM; Jen | Mar 15, 2019 3:49:59 PM; mourning dove |
Mar 15, 2019 3:59:32 PM
Posted by: ex-SA | Mar 16, 2019 9:18:03 AM | 171
A few half-baked thoughts on this: it seems to me both sides of this argument have some
merits. On the one side I am inclined to agree with ex-SA that the working classes in the
colonising countries have had by and large a pretty cushy life since after the 2nd World War
when compared to the disenfranchised of the colonised countries, both before and after
(ostensible but not really real) decolonisation.
The brutality of neoliberalism and austerity on working people in the rich nations (but
arguably even more so on those in poor nations!) does not in my view very seriously detract
from that argument.
One thing that does arguably somewhat detract from the above argument is that when viewed in
non-materialistic terms, those living in the so-called rich countries often have markedly
meaningless and miserable lives compared to many poor people living in materially poor
countries (extreme destitution obviously aside) - in other words they are miserably
unhappy.
Many people in Germany, for example, earn relatively high wages, most of which they spend on
very high housing costs (and energy costs etc) - often alone, and spend the rest of their
income on highly processed food from supermarkets that costs a multiple of what the simple
basic local foodstuffs that were eaten in former times would cost (and still could if you know
how to live more meaningfully); and meanwhile their life is spiritually frozen and devoid of
worthwhile meaning.
In contrast, often people living materially poor lives in undeveloped and in materialist
terms extremely poor countries, but living much closer to nature and with much warmer intra-
and inter-familial relations in extended families, and have a philosophy of life that is less
exclusively materialist and much more conducive to spiritual well-being. I would argue however
that this aspect is largely tangental to the issue of winners and losers of colonialism.
I agree with Bevin @ 131's point about the destitution of the British working classes prior
to the first world war, but what about post-1960's? I don't really see that the lifestyles of
the worst victims of austerity today are comparable to the lifestyles of the poor in the 18th
or 19th century? I think the lives of even the poorest of the poor (excluding probably the
homeless) in the West are massively subsidised by the spoils of the (ongoing) rape of the
colonised countries.
The entire expectations of people in the West - including the poor - are based on
assumptions of entitlement to things which are critically dependent on the rape and theft of
the resources of the colonised countries. Look at the extraordinarily privileged living
standards of ordinary working people in Belgium today, as an extreme example!
It is always interesting to reflect that in former times the West was always viewed as the
poor part of the world, and the East as wealthy - and historically it is true that throughout
most of recorded history the East was extremely wealthy compared to the pauper West - the
current-day material wealth of the West relative to the East should be viewed as an
extraordinary anomaly! The first Westerners to visit the East marvelled at its phenomenal
wealth and envied it. That indeed was the primary cause of the Crusades - the paupers of the
West envied the riches of the East and drummed up pseudo-religious excuses to rape and pillage
whatever they could grab. It is not without reason that most of the economically poorest
countries in reacent times are precisely those countries with the most abundant valuable
natural resources.
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual
myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they
may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing compared
with that of the rich."
John Kenneth Galbraith
The sugar high of the Trump election seems to be wearing a bit thin on Wall Street. I had said at the time that I thought they would
just execute the trading plans they had in place in their supposition that Hillary was going to win. And this is what I think they
did, and have been doing.
And so when the thrill is gone, and dull reality starts sinking in, I suspect we are going to be in for quite a correction.
However, I am tuning out the hysteria from the Wall Street Democrats, especially the pitiful whining emanating from organizations
like MSNBC, CNN, and the NY Times, because they have discredited themselves as reliable, unbiased sources. They really have.
They may just be joining their right-leaning peers in this, but they still do not realize it, and think of themselves as exceptional,
and morally superior. And the same can be said of many pundits, and insiders, and very serious people with important podiums
in the academy and the press.
Hillary was to be their meal ticket. And their anguish at being denied a payday for their faithful service is remarkable.
We are being treated to rumours that Trump is going to appoint this or that despicable person to some key position. I am waiting
for him to show his hand with some actual decisions and appointments.
This is not to say that I am optimistic, not in the least. I am not, and I most certainly did not vote for him (or her for that
matter). But the silliness of the courtiers in the media is just too much, too much whining from those who had their candy of power
and money by association expectations taken away.
I am therefore very interested in seeing who the DNC will choose as chairperson. Liz Warren came out today and endorsed Ellison,
which I believe Bernie Sanders has done as well. He is no insider like Wasserman-Schulz, Brazile, or Dean.
The Democratic party is at a crossroads, in a split between taking policy positions along lines of 'class' or 'identity.'
By class is meant working class of the broader public versus the moneyed interests of financiers and tech monopolists.
Identity implies the working with various minority groups who certainly may deserve redress for real suppression of their
rights and other financial abuses, but in a 'splintering' manner that breaks them down into special interest groups rather than a
broader movement of the disadvantaged.
Why has this been the establishment approach of the heart of the Democratic power circles?
I think the reason for this Democratic strategy has been purely practical. There was no way the Wall Street wing of the Democratic
party could make policy along lines of the middle class and the poor, and keep a straight face, while gorging themselves in a frenzy
of massive soft corruption and enormous donations from the wealthiest few who they were thereby expected to represent and to serve.
And so they lost politically, and badly.
The average American, of whatever identity, finally became sick of them, and rejected the balkanization of their interests into
special identity groups that could be more easily managed and messaged, and controlled.
This was a huge difference that we saw in the Sanders campaign, almost to a fault. Not because he was wrong necessarily, but because
it was so unaccustomed, and insufficiently articulated. Sanders had his heart in the right place, perhaps, but he lacked the charisma
and outspokenness of an FDR. Not to mention that his own party powers were dead set against him, because they wanted to keep the
status quo that had rewarded them so well in place.
It is not at all obvious that the Democrats can find themselves again. Perhaps Mr. Trump, while doing some things well, will take
economic policy matters to an excess, and like the Democrats ignore the insecurity and discontent of the working class. And the people
will find a voice, eventually, in either the Democratic party, or something entirely new.
This is not just an American phenomenon. This has happened with Labour and Brexit in the UK, and is happening in the rest of the
developed nations in Europe. One thing that the ruling elite of the West have had in common is a devotion to corporate globalisation
and inequality.
And that system is not going to 'cohere' as economist Robert Johnson had put it so well.
With all this change and volatility and insecurity, it appears that people will be reaching for some sort of safe haven for themselves
and their resources. So far the Dollar index has benefited from this, not because of its virtues, but from the weakness and foundering
of the others.
I am afraid that the confidence in the Dollar as a safe haven is misplaced, especially if things go as I expect that they will
with the US economy under a Trump administration. But that is still largely in his hand,s to be decided and written. We have yet
to see if he has the will and mind to oppose the vested interests of his own party and the corporate, moneyed interests.
That is an enormous, history-making task, requiring an almost historic moral compass. And so I am not optimistic.
First of all, what is called "School of management" typically is a voodoo cult that should
have nothing to do with university education ;-)
"He [Bush] signaled the shift [in strategy] in a speech here [in Pittsburgh] last week
when he charged that Reagan had made 'a list of phony promises' on defense, energy and
economic policy. And he labeled Reagan's tax cut proposal 'voodoo economic policy' and
'economic madness.'"
It's not the temporary ban on immigration that upsets people so much as singling out
people from specific countries, whether Obama's Republican Congress in did it or Trump did
it.
The ban should be on all religious extremists including apartheid Zionists and Christian
extremists. Religious extremists from all of the major religions have committed heinous
atrocities.
...And the Demo establishment lines up to attack Drumpf's ban; hoping to get some easy
votes for corporatist neo-con hypocrites?
...The main purpose of all the noise against president Trump is to weaken him and
then force him to take the positions the deep state wants him to take. Among the many
problems he has he is only an apprentice.
"... As Sen. Elizabeth Warren has famously said with respect to cabinet and other political appointments, "Personnel Is Policy." You can see the outline of the Trump administration's real policies being shaped before our eyes via his proposed cabinet appointees, covered by Politico and other sites. ..."
"... Sanders, Warren and others should hold Trump's feet to the fire on the truly populist things he said and offer to work with him on that stuff. Like preserving Social Security and Medicare and getting out of wars. ..."
Not surprised at all. The election is over, the voters are now moot. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren
has famously said with respect to cabinet and other political appointments, "Personnel Is Policy."
You can see the outline of the Trump administration's real policies being shaped before our eyes
via his proposed cabinet appointees, covered by Politico and other sites.
Also no mention of NAFTA or renegotiating trade deals in the new transition agenda. Instead
there's just a bunch of vague Chamber of Commercesque language about making America attractive
to investors. I think our hopes for a disruptive Trump presidency are quickly being dashed.
Sanders, Warren and others should hold Trump's feet to the fire on the truly populist things
he said and offer to work with him on that stuff. Like preserving Social Security and Medicare
and getting out of wars.
As to the last point, appointing Bolton or Corker Secretary of State would be a clear indication
he was just talking. A clear violation of campaign promises that would make Obama look like a
choirboy. Trump may be W on steroids.
I can't imagine how he's neglected to update his transition plan regarding nafta. After all,
he's already been president-elect for, what, 36 hours now? And he only talked about it umpteen
times during the campaign. I'm sure he'll renege.
Hell, it took Clinton 8 hours to give her concession speech.
On the bright side, he managed to kill TPP just by getting elected. Was that quick enough for
you?
Look at this forecast now and laugh... Trump betrayed all hopes.
Notable quotes:
"... It's obvious that Americans want a new direction when it comes to foreign policy. That's partly what Trump's election is all about. Americans are sick and tired of the never-ending wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. That includes military families, especially the many who supported Trump, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. Americans are also tired of the out of control spending and debt that come with these wars. By electing Trump, it is obvious that Americans are demanding a change on foreign policy. ..."
Eight years ago, President Obama had a chance to change the warmongering direction that outgoing
President Bush and the U.S. national-security establishment had led America for the previous eight
years. Obama could have said, "Enough is enough. America has done enough killing and dying. I'm going
to lead our country in a different direction - toward peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people
of the world." He could have ordered all U.S. troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan to return
home. He could have ended U.S. involvement in the endless wars that Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA
spawned in that part of the world. He could have led America in a new direction.
Instead, Obama decided to stay Bush's course, no doubt believing that he, unlike Bush, could win
the endless wars that Bush had started. It was not to be. He chose to keep the national-security
establishment embroiled in Afghanistan and Iraq. Death and destruction are Obama's legacy, just as
they were Bush's.
Obama hoped that Hillary Clinton would protect and continue his (and Bush's) legacy of foreign
death and destruction. Yesterday, a majority of American voters dashed that hope.
Will Trump change directions and bring U.S. troops home? Possibly not, especially given he is
an interventionist, just as Clinton, Bush, and Obama are. But there is always that possibility, especially
since Trump, unlike Clinton, owes no allegiance to the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose survival
and prosperity depends on endless wars and perpetual crises.
If Clinton had been elected, there was never any doubt about continued U.S. interventionism in
Afghanistan and the Middle East. Not only is she a died-in-the-wool interventionist, she would have
been owned by the national-security establishment. She would have done whatever the Pentagon, CIA,
and NSA wanted, which would have automatically meant endless warfare - and permanent destruction
of the liberty and prosperity of the American people.
It's obvious that Americans want a new direction when it comes to foreign policy. That's partly
what Trump's election is all about. Americans are sick and tired of the never-ending wars in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. That includes military families, especially the many who
supported Trump, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. Americans are also tired of the out of control spending
and debt that come with these wars. By electing Trump, it is obvious that Americans are demanding
a change on foreign policy.
Imagine the benefits to American society if Trump were to change directions on foreign policy.
No more anti-American terrorist blowback, which would mean no more war on terrorism. That means the
restoration of a sense of normality to American lives. No more TSA checkpoints at airports. No more
mass surveillance schemes to "keep us safe." No more color coded warnings. No more totalitarian power
to round up Americans, put them into concentration camps or military dungeons, and torture them.
No more power to assassinate people, including Americans. In other words, the restoration of American
civil liberties and privacy.
The Middle East is embroiled in civil wars - wars that have been engendered or magnified by U.S.
interventionism. Continued interventionism in an attempt to fix the problems only pours gasoline
on the fires. The U.S. government has done enough damage to Afghanistan and the Middle East. It has
already killed enough people, including those in wedding parties, hospitals, and neighborhoods. Enough
is enough.
Will Trump be bad on immigration and trade? Undoubtedly, but Clinton would have been bad in
those areas too. Don't forget, after all, that Obama has become America's greatest deporter-in-chief,
deporting more illegal immigrants than any U.S. president in history. Clinton would have followed
in his footsteps, especially in the hope of protecting his legacy. Moreover, while Trump will undoubtedly
begin trade wars, Clinton would have been imposing sanctions on people all over the world whose government
failed to obey the commands of the U.S. government. A distinction without a difference.
Another area for hope under a Trump presidency is with respect to the drug war, one of the most
failed, destructive, and expensive government programs in history. Clinton would have followed in
Bush's and Obama's footsteps by keeping it in existence, if for no other reason than to cater to
the army of DEA agents, federal and state judges, federal and state prosecutors, court clerks, and
police departments whose existence depends on the drug war.
While Trump is a drug warrior himself, he doesn't have the same allegiance to the vast drug-war
bureaucracy that Clinton has. If we get close to pushing this government program off the cliff -
and I am convinced that it is on the precipice - there is a good chance that Trump will not put much
effort into fighting its demise. Clinton would have fought for the drug war with every fiber of her
being.
There is another possible upside to Trump's election: The likelihood that Cold War II will
come to a sudden end. With Clinton, the continuation of the new Cold War against Russia was a certainty.
In fact, Clinton's Cold War might well have gotten hot very quickly, given her intent to establish
a no-fly zone over Syria where she could show how tough she is by ordering U.S. warplanes to shoot
down Russian warplanes. There is no telling where that would have led, but it very well might have
led to all-out nuclear war, something that the U.S. national-security establishment wanted with the
Soviet Union back in the 1960s under President Kennedy.
The danger of war with Russia obviously diminishes under a President Trump, who has said that
he favors friendly relations with Russia, just as Kennedy favored friendly relations with the Soviet
Union and Cuba in the months before he was assassinated.
Indeed, given Trump's negative comments about NATO, there is even the possibility of a dismantling
of that old Cold War dinosaur that gave us the crisis in Ukraine with Russia.
How about it, President-Elect Trump? While you're mulling over your new Berlin Wall on the Southern
(and maybe Northern) border and your coming trade wars with China, how about refusing to follow
the 16 years of Bush-Obama when it comes to U.S. foreign interventionism? Bring the troops home.
Lead America in a different direction, at least insofar as foreign policy is concerned - away from
death, destruction, spending, debt, loss of liberty and privacy, and economic impoverishment and
toward freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony.
"... What happened? Why is this clique's triumphant return to power erupting in massive scandal this time around? Probably because we are living in an era during which much that was mysterious is suddenly becoming clear. Probably because Trump's "silent majority" suddenly saw before them someone they had been waiting for for a long time – a man ready to defend their interests. ..."
"... Perhaps also it is because the middle class is choking on its growing exasperation with the "elite caste" occupying its native country. And it finally became clear to the sober-minded American patriots in law enforcement that the return to power of the people responsible for the current global chaos could be a big threat to the US and rest of the world. Because, in the end, everyone has children and no one wants a new world war. ..."
Today Trump represents an entirely new party made up of half of the American electorate, and they
are ready for action. And whatever the eventual political structure of this new model, this is what
is shaping America's present reality. Moreover, this does not seem like such a unique situation.
It rather appears to be the final chapter of some ancient story, in which the convoluted plotlines
finally take shape and find resolution.
The circumstances are increasingly reminiscent of 1860, when Lincoln's election so enraged the
South that those states began agitating for secession. Trump is today symbolic of a very real American
tradition that during
the Civil War (1860-1865) ran headlong into American revolutionary liberalism for the first time.
Right up until World War I traditional American conservatism wore the guise of "isolationism."
Prior to WWII it was known as "non-interventionism." Afterward, that movement attempted to use
Sen. Joseph
McCarthy to battle the left-liberal stranglehold. And in the 1960s it became the primary target
of the "counter-cultural revolution."
Its last bastion was
Richard
Nixon , whose fall was the result of an unprecedented attack from the left-liberal press in 1974.
And this is perhaps the example against which we should compare the present-day Trump and his current
fight.
And by the way, the crimes of Hillary Clinton, who has failed to protect state secrets and has
repeatedly been caught lying under oath, clearly outweigh the notorious Watergate scandal that led
to Nixon's forced resignation under threat of impeachment. But the liberal American media remains
silent, as if nothing has happened.
By all indications it is clear that we are standing before a truly epochal moment. But before
turning to the future that might await us, let's take a quick glance at the history of conflict between
revolutionary liberalism and traditional white conservatism in the US.
***
Immediately after WWII, an attack on two fronts was launched by the party of "expansionism" (we'll
call it that). The Soviet Union and Communism were designated the number one enemy. Enemy number
two (with less hype) was traditional American conservatism. The war against traditional "Americanism"
was waged by several intellectual fringe groups simultaneously.
The country's cultural and intellectual life was under the absolute control of a group known as
the " New York
Intellectuals ." Literary criticism as well as all other aspects of the nation's literary life
was in the hands of this small group of literary curators who had emerged from the milieu of a Trotskyist-communist
magazine known as the
Partisan Review (PR). No one could become a professional writer in the America of the 1950s and
1960s without being carefully screened by this sect.
The foundational tenets of American political philosophy and sociology were composed by militants
from the Frankfurt School
, which had been established during the interwar period in Weimar Germany and which moved to
the US after the National Socialists took power. Here, retraining their sights from communist to
liberal, they set out to design a "theory of totalitarianism" in addition to their concept of an
"authoritarian personality" – both hostile to "democracy."
The "New York Intellectuals" and representatives of the Frankfurt School became friends, and
Hannah Arendt , for example, was an
authoritative representative of both sects. This is where future neocons (Norman Podhoretz, Eliot
A. Cohen, and Irving Kristol) gained their experience. The former leader of the Trotskyist Fourth
International and godfather of the neocons,
Max Shachtman , held a place
of honor in the "family of intellectuals."
The anthropological school of Franz Boas and Freudianism reigned over the worlds of psychology
and sociology at that time. The Boasian approach in psychology argued that genetic, national, and
racial differences between individuals were of no importance (thus the concepts of "national culture"
and "national community" were meaningless).
Psychoanalysis also became fashionable, which primarily aimed to supplant traditional church institutions
and become a type of quasi-religion for the middle class.
The common denominator linking all these movements was anti-fascism. Did something look fishy
in this? But the problem was that the traditional values of the nation, state, and family were all
labeled "fascist." From this standpoint, any white Christian man aware of his cultural and national
identity was potentially a "fascist."
Kevin MacDonald, a professor of psychology at California State University, analyzed in detail
the seizure of America's cultural, political, and mental landscape by these "liberal sects" in his
brilliant book The Culture
of Critique , writing:
"The New York Intellectuals, for example, developed ties with elite universities, particularly
Harvard, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and the University of California-Berkeley, while
psychoanalysis and anthropology became well entrenched throughout academia.
"The moral and intellectual elite established by these movements dominated intellectual
discourse during a critical period after World War II and leading into the countercultural revolution
of the 1960s."
It was precisely this intellectual milieu that spawned the countercultural revolution of the 1960s.
Riding the wave of these sentiments, the new
Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, encouraging this phenomenon and facilitating
the integration of immigrants into US society. The architects of the law wanted to use the celebrated
melting pot to "dilute" the "potentially fascist" descendants of European immigrants by making use
of new ethno-cultural elements.
The 60s revolution opened the door to the American political establishment to representatives
from both wings of the expansionist "party" – the neo-liberals and the neo-conservatives.
Besieged by the left-liberal press in 1974, Richard Nixon resigned under threat of impeachment.
In the same year the US Congress passed the
Jackson-Vanik
Amendment (drafted by Richard
Perle ), which emerged as a symbol of the country's "new political agenda" – economic war against
the Soviet Union using sanctions and boycotts.
At that same time the "hippie generation" was joining the Democratic Party on the coattails of
Senator George McGovern's campaign . And that was when Bill Clinton's smiling countenance first
emerged on the US political horizon.
And the future neo-conservatives (at that time still disciples of the Democratic hawk Henry "Scoop"
Jackson) began to slowly edge in the direction of the Republicans.
In 1976, Mr. Rumsfeld and his fellow neo-conservatives resurrected the
Committee
on the Present Danger , an inter-party club for political hawks whose goal became the launch
of an all-out propaganda war against the USSR.
Former Trotskyists and followers of Max Shachtman (Kristol, Podhoretz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick)
and advisers to Sen. Henry Jackson (Paul Wolfowitz, Perle, Elliott Abrams, Charles Horner, and Douglas
Feith) joined Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and other "Christian" politicians with the intention
of launching a "campaign to transform the world."
This is where the neocons' "nonpartisan ideology" originated. And eventually today's "inalterable
US government" hatched from this egg.
American politics began to acquire its current shape during the Reagan era. In economics this
was seen in the policy of neoliberalism (politics waged in the interests of big financial capital)
and in foreign policy – in a strategy consisting of "holy war against the forces of evil." The Nixon-Kissinger
tradition of foreign policy (which viewed the Soviet Union and China as a normal countries with which
is essential to find common ground) was entirely abandoned.
The collapse of the USSR was a sign of the onset of the final phase of the "neocon revolution."
At that point their protégé, Francis Fukuyama, announced the "end of history."
***
As the years passed, the influence of the neo-conservatives (in politics) and neoliberals (in
economics) only expanded. Through all manner of committees, foundations, "think tanks," etc., the
students of Milton Friedman and Leo Strauss (from the departments of economics and political science
at the University of Chicago) penetrated ever more deeply into the inner workings of the Washington
power machine. The apotheosis of this expansion was the presidency of George W. Bush, during which
the neocons, having seized the primary instruments of power in the White House, were able to plunge
the country into the folly of a war in the Middle East.
By the end of the Bush presidency this clique was the object of universal hatred throughout the
US. That's why the middle-ground, innocuous figure of Barack Obama, a Democrat, was able to move
into the White House for the next eight years. The neocons stepped down from their central rostrums
of power and returned to their "influential committees." It is likely that this election was intended
to facilitate the triumphant return of the neoconservative-neoliberal paradigm all wrapped up in
"new packaging." For various reasons, the decision was made to assign this role to Hillary Clinton.
But it seems that at the most critical moment the flimsy packaging ripped open
What happened? Why is this clique's triumphant return to power erupting in massive scandal this
time around? Probably because we are living in an era during which much that was mysterious is suddenly
becoming clear. Probably because Trump's "silent majority" suddenly saw before them someone they
had been waiting for for a long time – a man ready to defend their interests.
Perhaps also it is because the middle class is choking on its growing exasperation with the "elite
caste" occupying its native country. And it finally became clear to the sober-minded American patriots
in law enforcement that the return to power of the people responsible for the current global chaos
could be a big threat to the US and rest of the world. Because, in the end, everyone has children
and no one wants a new world war.
How will this new conservative revolt against the elite end? Will Trump manage to "drain the swamp
of Washington, DC" as he has promised, or he will end up as the system's next victim? Very soon we
can finally get an answer to these questions.
Some people understood it in 2016: "The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country
hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is
simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better."
Also: "To claim the trump is more powerful and has more influence over the US deep state on day one
is just ludicrous."
Notable quotes:
"... Remember, the US Constitution was written by aristocrats who were still in many ways monarchists who didn't want to give up all their power. That mindset also put the electoral college process into the constitution. ..."
"... Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil). ..."
"... Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE ..."
"... "The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better." ..."
"... So is Trump Hope and Change for the Angry White Male demographic? ..."
"... I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading. Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will force Trump to respond accordingly. ..."
"... That's a mini-conspiracy compared with the one that the Fake War Of Terror has distracted people's attention from. The Privatisation of almost every Publicly-owned asset and piece of infrastructure in the West. The Neolib takeover was well-advanced in 1999 but slipped into overdrive in 2001. Banks, Insurance Cos, Telcos, Airlines, Childcare, Hospitals, Health Clinics (preventative), Roads, Rail, Electrical Generation and distribution. ..."
"... To claim the trump is more powerful and has more influence over the US deep state on day one is just ludicrous. ..."
"... I'm going with the new boss is the same as the old boss. ..."
"...the paradox problem is they'll have to charge Clinton before da boy can pardon her..."
That's one of those facts that sounds right but isn't true. If the law was logical that might
be correct, but then mathematicians would get the highest scores on the Law School Admission Test
(which supposedly tests aptitude to "think like a lawyer.")
The President of the U.S. can't pardon someone in advance for possible later crimes, but can give
a pardon for any and all past crimes without specifying those crimes. That's how Ford was able to
pardon Nixon, who had not been indicted, for any crimes "he might have committed."
If Obama wants he can pardon the Clintons for everything and anything they MIGHT have done up
to the final minutes of swearing in Trump. In that case they would never need to concede they had
ever broken any laws at all.
Remember, the US Constitution was written by aristocrats who were still in many ways monarchists
who didn't want to give up all their power. That mindset also put the electoral college process into
the constitution.
Are you saying that Obama could pardon Bill Clinton and his entire foundation for financial crimes
(apparently) being investigated in New York wrt New York's laws regarding charitable foundation
practices? That seems like it would be "bigger than Marc Rich" demonstration of Democratic misuse
/ abuse of power, cronyism, etc.
If he can do it, he might do it ... if the punishment/threat for not doing it was sufficient.
I've not been impressed by Obama's "brilliance" or "vision" ... I have been impressed rather by
his self-promotion and self-interest -- Neither Bush or Bill Clinton had the sort of job opportunities
that GHWB enjoyed.
Oh, what does anyone know about Pence? Folks have been saying he's going to be Trump's
Cheney (and apparently Cheney is a Pence's avowed role model and personal hero). Cheney had a
lifetime of insider experience and I'm guessing is both ambitious and intelligent (if evil).
Does Pence have genuine potential as Cheney II ... and where does the awkward relationship
between the GOP establishment and Trump put "Pence as a new Cheney" ... The GOP might love it.
Is Trump ideologically consistent enough (don't laugh) to recognize the contradictions?
Did anyone catch Peter Thiel's speech to the National Press Club? Listen to this and tell
me it is not spot on. His is actually on Rumps transition team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfYLEPRiIyE
Early days indeed. An alternative view of the recent events, by someone who said more or less
the same about Obama when he was selected.
"The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country
hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is
simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better."
I agree with Hoarsewhisperer @11: ... it's a crock and a trick.
I doubt very much that the Obama is providing "continuity". IMO this is a naive reading.
Obama has just created a smokescreen that allows for preparing to 'facts on the ground' that will
force Trump to respond accordingly.
We are at a very very dangerous point in time.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Also, giving ANY credence to 'Obama legacy' BS is misguided in the extreme. His 'legacy'
is dissembling and treachery. Anything thing beyond that is just BS meant to keep adversary's
off-balance.
@22 Where do you get the idea that those countries are somehow bad for USA? If we ramp up industries
in USA it will cost substantially more than in those countries. They've benefitted USA immensely.
If the industries come back to USA it won't go over too well, unless slave wages are truly instituted
I don't know if Trump can take credit ... but rather that the Clinton wing of the Pentagon
and CIA, etc. has been defanged and the threat of a coup (if Obama acted in ways contrary to Clinton
and the General's plans) is now neutralized ... Clinton's loss, I hope, will mean future books
will be more candid than might have been possible if she were in office... yes, I wanna know how
bad it's been these last 8 years.
Obama's personal stock wrt his future as a consultant, motivational speaker and all around
leader fell dramatically both with Clinton's campaign (and anticipated sharp turn from Obama's
foreign policy) but also with her defeat (now his legacy). He was spared the ongoing shaming by
a Clinton administration. Likely too little, too late ... when does Kerry get back from the Antarctica?
He's got a chance at some legacy mending as well.
I believe reports that the Clintons and the Obamas loathe each other ... particularly since
the Clintons hate everyone/anyone who does not grovel perfectly. Did Obama sell-out to the DLC
Democrats to secure his future $$$ with all their and the foundation's friends... it will be fun
to watch and look for breadcrumbs, particularly if the foundation implodes under scrutiny.
That would be as part of the carveup that we are not supposed to talk about because it is a
wicked "conspiracy theory"...
Posted by: paul | Nov 11, 2016 12:12:44 PM | 17
That's a mini-conspiracy compared with the one that the Fake War Of Terror has distracted people's
attention from. The Privatisation of almost every Publicly-owned asset and piece of infrastructure
in the West. The Neolib takeover was well-advanced in 1999 but slipped into overdrive in 2001.
Banks, Insurance Cos, Telcos, Airlines, Childcare, Hospitals, Health Clinics (preventative), Roads,
Rail, Electrical Generation and distribution.
In Oz the Govt/people used to own all of the above, or a competitive participant in the 'market'
in the case of banking, insurance, health clinics, airlines etc. In 2016 the govt owns only unprofitable
burdens. Public Education is currently under extreme pressure to be Privatised for Profit.
(The Yanks call it Anti-Communism but consumers call it an Effing Expensive way to get much
crappier service than in the Good Old Days).
I think you give Barrack Obongo way too much credit. He is a "selfishly concerned" narcissist
alright but that's about it. All his years at the bathhouses and public lavatories with his wookie-in-drag
in Chicago, has not made him particularly smarter you know, rather the opposite...
Dropping AQ means dropping KSA, i.e. the 9/11 enquiry will probably go ahead. As for the MB/Qatar
who run a bunch of other groups, this is left to the EU to decide what it want to do with Turkey.
You bet the Eurocrats are having a headache. And Hollande shows his muscles (sic) and claims he
will talk with Trump on the phone and gets some "clarifications" about his programme.
MSM are reporting on a daily basis of the huge problems with the "Syrian refugees" crossing
the Mediterranean Sea although there is just a handful of Syrians compared to Eritreans, Sudanese,
Gambians etc.
According to the report, the last time Turkish jets participated in airstrikes against terrorists
in Syria was on October 23, three days after around 200 PKK/PYD terrorists were killed.
Ash Carter is, together with John Brennan, the major anti-Russian force in the Obama administration.
He is a U.S. weapon industry promoter and the anti-Russia campaign, which helps to sell U.S. weapons
to NATO allies in Europe, is largely of his doing.
BTW, I do believe he re-won his senate seat, against the true patriot Arpaio there.
Hence his absence from the public scene these months.
So things have not changed much if at all, since still 70 days to Jan20, except for appearances
as they've rearranged some furniture & color-matched the curtains to the upholstery in the act/play
is all.
@11 Hoarsewhisperer - I think it's unrealistic to expect the US simply to leave..
...
Posted by: Grieved | Nov 11, 2016 12:33:02 PM | 27
Today, your guess is as good as mine (at least).
But I regard FrUKUS as Ter'rism Central and if Russia & China et al think they can put a stop
to TerCent without dislodging some teeth and kneecapping them, they're pissing into the wind/dreaming.
It's a bit ambiguous but China, according to CCTV Nov 12, during a chat about Sun Yat Sen and
China/Taiwan unity, seems to be issuing a Global reminder to Loyal Chinese Citizens overseas similar
to the one that Russia issued a month ago.
Disgusting as it is, yes, my understanding is Obama can do exactly that. My guess is, want
to or not, he probably will come under so much pressure he will have to pass out plenty of pardons.
Or maybe Lynch will give everyone involved in the Clinton Foundation immunity to testify and then
seal the testimony -- or never bother to get any testimony. So many games.
For Obama, it might not even take all that much pressure. From about his second day in office,
from his body language, he's always looked like he was scared.
Instead of keeping his mouth shut, which he would do, being the lawyer he is, Giuliani has
been screaming for the Clintons' scalps. That's exactly what a sharp lawyer would do if he was
trying to force Obama to pardon them. If he really meant to get them he would be agreeing with
the FBI, saying there doesn't seem to be any evidence of wrong doing, and then change his mind
once (if) he's AG and it's too late for deals.
With so many lawyers, Obama, the Clintons, Lynch, Giuliani, Comey, no justice is likely to
come out of this.
@ Posted by: Ken Nari | Nov 11, 2016 2:51:53 PM | 55
I heard a podcast on Batchelor with Charles Ortel which explained some things -- even if
there are no obvious likely criminal smoking guns -- given that foundations get away with a lot
of "leniency" because they are charities, incomplete financial statements and chartering documents,
as I recall. I was most interested in his description of the number of jurisdictions the Foundation
was operating under, some of whom, like New York were already investigating; and others, foreign
who might or might be, who also have very serious regulations, opening the possibility that if
the Feds drop their investigation, New York (with very very strict law) might proceed, and that
they might well be investigated (prosecuted/banned??) in Europe.
The most recent leak wrt internal practices was just damning ... it sounded like a playground
of favors and sinecures ... no human resources department, no written policies on many practices
...
This was an internal audit and OLD (2008, called "the Gibson Review") so corrective action
may have been taken, but I thought was damning enough to deter many donors (even before Hillary's
loss removed that incentive) particularly on top of the Band (2011) memo. Unprofessional to the
extreme.
It's part of my vast relief that Clinton lost and will not be in our lives 24/7/365 for the
next 4 years. (I think Trump is an unprincipled horror, but that's as may be, I'm not looking
for a fight). After the mess Clinton made of Haiti (and the accusations/recriminations) I somehow
thought they'd have been more careful with their "legacy" -- given that it was founded in 1997,
2008 is a very long time to be operating without written procedures wrt donations, employment
"... "How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make us safer, in fact, quite the opposite . We need to think really hard about these commitments," said William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute. ..."
"... A prominent member of the outsiders is Rand Paul, skeptic of Bush's foreign policy, who has criticized Bolton in the last few days. Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed to oppose." ..."
"... However, neo-cons are bad at losing, so they have redoubled efforts to land one of their own next to Trump. Lindsey Graham, a prominent foreign policy hawk in the Senate, issued an endorsement of Bolton on Thursday, saying: "He understands who our friends and enemies are. We see the world in very similar ways." ..."
"... He also slammed Paul's criticism of Bolton: "You could put the number of Republicans who will follow Rand Paul's advice on national security in a very small car. Rand is my friend but he's a libertarian and an outlier in the party on these issues." ..."
"... Meanwhile, the biggest warmonger, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, who has not said who he'd like to see in Trump's cabinet, laid down a marker on Tuesday by warning the future Trump administration against trying to seek an improved relationship with adversary Russia. "When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side those fighting tyranny. That is where we must stand again," he warned. ..."
"... MENA is the most important, perhaps the only leverage that the US has to hold the global reserve currency. As long as the US retain the world's money, the US can finance its debt while collecting rent worldwide. Also, the US can export its inflation. ..."
"... No US President can, or will willingly let these three to fail, because the collapse will be horrifying. ..."
"... the U.S. Empire has globalised its reach as an instrument of the deep state and its oligarchy of owner/operators. Ostensibly to bring democracy to the oppressed, its real purpose was to enrich the rent-seekers on the MIC value chain and to protect and serve the private globalist interests who were the clients of the deep state. National funds flow has always been net outbound, and not the other way around, as in any successful precendent for empire. This continues to be true to this day because of the influence the wealthy rent-seekers on this value chain have over the federal government. Simple as that. ..."
"... Raytheon, Lockheed and Boeing are corporate sponsors of the Rockefeller/CFR. James Woolsey, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton, Eliot Cohen and John McCain are CFR members. Also Bill Clinton, Janet Yellen, John Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros. See member lists at cfr dot org. Cohen, Bolton, Woolsey, and McCain were also members of PNAC. ..."
"... Yes. Out of NATO, stop the endless pointless wars in the M.E., embrace George Washington and avoiding "foreign entaglements." ..."
"... Agree...but, easier said than done. A large component of our economy is wholly dependent on government funded MIC and arms sales. Dependency on government spending as large part of our economy has seeped into nearly every aspect of our market place. ..."
"... There is a problem with the long term approach...is that the every attempt will be made to stop such a transition in its tracks. Even if it means world war. ..."
"... With modern travel and communications neither policy would work any longer but I'll take nationalism. Bottom line on hawks, the budget is busted out! Cant afford guns and butter anymore. ..."
"... The empire building has made all but a few a lot poorer and the majority on earth more miserable. I am not naive, I know violence is sometimes necessary, but eternal offence as a strategy ensures enemies will find ways to focus on that top dog and beat you. Beside what I think or believe about foreign policy, it doesn't matter we are broke in affording empire. Period. ..."
"... You guys crazy or sumpthin? You want full employment at good wages? All out War is your best bet. No messy "fixing" anything, just flip the switch and off you go. Draft all those troublemakers, turn them into cannon fodder, crank up the printing presses and happy days are here again. ..."
"... What is with you people? It is almost like Saudi Arabia doesn't exist and doesn't buy our politicians. It is almost as if Hillary Clinton never existed, nor her Saudi asset girlfriend (yes, married to an Israeli asset). Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis. And then you might want to also say fuck you to the British who are responsible for both nations. ..."
"... Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis ..."
"... Wahabism/Salafism has been used since Reagan as a weapon for covert war. Saudi Petrodollars recycle back to the U.S. MIC as they pass through the CIA Hillary Clinton approved very large increases in weapons to the Saudi's especially as they funded the Clinton machine. Clintons are CFR agents, and that has a heavy jewish illuminst influence. ..."
"... In what fucking dimension do people this fucking incompetent still have jobs, let alone credibility? Preposterous that they even still have jobs. The US has blown 5-6 trillion on losing one war after the other, has caused massive disorder and chaos in the Mideast to absolutely no one's benefit except Israel, or so Israel believes, and destabilized the entire region to the point that a WWIII could erupt at any moment. ..."
"... Disaster and incompetence at this level can only be rewarded with sackings and terminations across the board. But no, not in the US. The public is more preooccupied with fictional racists and Donald's bawdy pussy talk. ..."
"... Trump has been provided an easy litmus test, who has ever advocated deposing Assad must be rejected, not because Assad is such a great guy, but because those who would replace him are radical islamists all. Russia could be cultivated as a friend and do more for world peace than the Arab world which has a fatal jihad disease. ..."
"... The presidency is more of a ceremonial position now. If the deep state doesn't like the president, it can simply fire him, as it did with Kennedy (and arguably Nixon). It can also make his life a living hell or force a foreign policy showdown as it did with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs. ..."
"... Controlled demolitions take weeks of planning and preparation. So the implication is that someone planned the WTC7 collapse weeks in advance. WTC7 held a number of offices, including offices of the SEC. Many files were destroyed. ..."
In late October, when it was still conventional wisdom that Hillary was "guaranteed" to win the presidency, the WaPo explained that
among the neo-con, foreign policy "elites" of the Pentagon, a feeling of calm content had spread: after all, it was just a matter
of time before the "pacifist" Obama was out, replaced by the more hawkish Hillary.
As the
WaPo reported , "there is one corner of Washington where Donald Trump's scorched-earth presidential campaign is treated as a
mere distraction and where bipartisanship reigns. In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President
Obama's departure from the White House - and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton - is being met
with quiet relief ."
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American
foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.
Oops.
Not only did the "foreign policy" elite get the Trump "scorched-earth distraction" dead wrong, it now has to scramble to find
what leverage - if any - it has in defining Trump's foreign policy. Worse, America's warmongers are now waging war (if only metaphorically:
we all know they can't wait for the real thing) against libertarians for direct access to Trump's front door, a contingency they
had never planned for.
As The Hill reported
earlier , "a battle is brewing between the GOP foreign policy establishment and outsiders over who will sit on President-elect
Donald Trump's national security team. The fight pits hawks and neoconservatives who served in the former Bush administrations against
those on the GOP foreign policy edges."
Taking a page out of Ron Paul's book, the libertarians, isolationists and realists see an opportunity to pull back America's commitments
around the world, spend less money on foreign aid and "nation-building," curtail expensive military campaigns and troop deployments,
and intervene militarily only to protect American interests. In short: these are people who believe that human life, and the avoidance
of war, is more valuable than another record quarter for Raytheon, Lockheed or Boeing.
On the other hand, the so-called establishment camp, many of whom disavowed Trump during the campaign, is made up of the same
people who effectively ran Hillary Clinton's tenure while she was Secretary of State, fully intent on creating zones of conflict,
political instability and outright war in every imaginable place, from North Africa to Ukraine. This group is pushing for Stephen
Hadley, who served as national security adviser under George W. Bush. Another Bush ally, John Bolton whose name has been floated
as a possible secretary of State, also falls into this camp.
According to The Hill, other neo-con, establishment candidates floated include Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob
Corker (R-Tenn.), outgoing Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), rising star Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and senior fellow at conservative think-tank
American Enterprise Institute and former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.).
"These figures all generally believe that the United States needs to take an active role in the world from the Middle East to
East Asia to deter enemies and reassure allies."
In short, should this group prevail, it would be the equivalent of 4 more years of HIllary Clinton running the State Department.
The outsider group sees things differently.
They want to revamp American foreign policy in a different direction from the last two administrations. Luckily, this particular
camp is also more in line with Trump's views questioning the value of NATO, a position that horrified many in the establishment camp.
"How many people sleep better knowing that the Baltics are part of NATO? They don't make us safer, in fact, quite the opposite
. We need to think really hard about these commitments," said William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles
Koch Institute.
A prominent member of the outsiders is Rand Paul, skeptic of Bush's foreign policy, who has criticized Bolton in the last
few days. Paul on Tuesday blasted Bolton in an op-ed in Rare as "a longtime member of the failed Washington elite that Trump vowed
to oppose."
... ... ...
However, neo-cons are bad at losing, so they have redoubled efforts to land one of their own next to Trump. Lindsey Graham,
a prominent foreign policy hawk in the Senate, issued an endorsement of Bolton on Thursday, saying: "He understands who our friends
and enemies are. We see the world in very similar ways."
He also slammed Paul's criticism of Bolton: "You could put the number of Republicans who will follow Rand Paul's advice on
national security in a very small car. Rand is my friend but he's a libertarian and an outlier in the party on these issues."
Funny, that's exactly what the experts said about Trump's chances of winning not even two weeks ago.
Meanwhile, the biggest warmonger, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, who has not said who he'd like to
see in Trump's cabinet, laid down a marker on Tuesday by warning the future Trump administration against trying to seek an improved
relationship with adversary Russia. "When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side those fighting tyranny.
That is where we must stand again," he warned.
Luckily, McCain - whose relationship with Trump has been at rock bottom ever since Trump's first appearance in the presidential
campaign - has zero impact on the thinking of Trump.
Furthermore, speaking of Russia, Retired Amy Col. Andrew Bacevich said there needs to be a rethink of American foreign policy.
He said the U.S. must consider whether Saudi Arabia and Pakistan qualify as U.S. allies, and the growing divergence between the U.S.
and Israel. "The establishment doesn't want to touch questions like these with a ten foot pole," he said at a conference on Tuesday
hosted by The American Conservative, the Charles Koch Institute, and the George Washington University Department of Political Science.
Furthermore, resetting the "deplorable" relations with Russia is a necessary if not sufficient condition to halt the incipient
nuclear arms build up that has resulted of the recent dramatic return of the Cold War. As such, a Trump presidency while potentially
a failure, may be best remember for avoiding the launch of World War III. If , that is, he manages to prevent the influence of neo-cons
in his cabinet.
And then there are the wildcards: those Trump advisers who are difficult to peg into which camp they fall into. One example is
retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who was selected by Trump as his national security
adviser. Flynn is a "curious case," said Daniel Larison, senior editor at The American Conservative. The retired Army general has
said he wants to work with Russia, but also expressed contrary views in his book "Field of Fight."
According to Larison, Flynn writes of an "enemy alliance" against the U.S. that includes Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, Syria,
Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. From that standpoint, he is about
as "establishment" as they come.
It's also not crystal clear which camp Giuliani falls into. The former mayor is known as a fierce critic of Islamic extremism
but has scant foreign policy experience.
Most say what is likely is change.
"Change is coming to American grand strategy whether we like it or not,' said Christopher Layne, Robert M. Gates Chair in National
Security at Texas A&M University.
"I think we are overdue for American retrenchment. Americans are beginning to suffer from hegemony fatigue," he said.
And, let's not forget, the tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children who are droned to death every year by anonymous
remote-control operators in the US just so the US can pursue its global hegemonic interest. They most certainly have, and unless
something indeed changes, will continue to suffer, leading to even more resentment against the US, and even more attacks against
US citizens around the globe, and on US soil. Some call them terrorism, others call them retaliation.
Help me here with this word (or whatever it means) REALISTS :
Article: Ron Paul's book, the libertarians, isolationists and REALISTS see an opportunity . to intervene militarily only to
protect American interests.
So dear Libertarians, as I am about to show you two examples, but the list is long, that you have a problem, because of (US)
reality:
1) You are told by the left and right massmedia that the US is something like that: King of natural gas. We'll be the world
exporter. That we have enough natural gas for 100 years, or some nonsense like that. But here is the REALITY :
US "still" had to import almost 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2015.
2) Again, you might hear from the left and right massmedia that: US is shale this. US is shale that, even that shale is not
oil, but some form of kerogen. In any event, here' the reality: US crude oil imports, by Millions of Barrels a Day: 2014: 7,344
2015: 7,363 As of July 2016: 8,092 (MBD)
Key Point (in my opinion): Libertarians, you can't have both of best worlds -two incomparable believes. You have to chose,
otherwise you'll be a hypocrite while being a neocon as well.
MENA is the most important, perhaps the only leverage that the US has to hold the global reserve currency. As long as the
US retain the world's money, the US can finance its debt while collecting rent worldwide. Also, the US can export its inflation.
No US President can, or will willingly let these three to fail, because the collapse will be horrifying.
This construction of the U.S. empire is a myth. Unlike the British, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or any other empire throughout
history you care to name, the construction of the U.S. Empire has been a drastic net drain on U.S. finances.
Unlike any preceding
empire, which invaded other lands in search of wealth and captured client states to monetize added value, the U.S. Empire
has globalised its reach as an instrument of the deep state and its oligarchy of owner/operators. Ostensibly to bring democracy
to the oppressed, its real purpose was to enrich the rent-seekers on the MIC value chain and to protect and serve the private
globalist interests who were the clients of the deep state. National funds flow has always been net outbound, and not the other
way around, as in any successful precendent for empire. This continues to be true to this day because of the influence the wealthy
rent-seekers on this value chain have over the federal government. Simple as that.
In the process, the USA has been hollowed out from the inside, and risks imminent collapse. The greatest hope we can hold out
for a Trump presidency is a recognition of the truth of this. Bannon gets close sometimes, but I still have my doubts that there
is true recognition of just how dire these current circumstances are. In this, people like Ron Paul are right on target - to save
the Republic, the Empire and its enabling institutions (like the Fed) must go.
Raytheon, Lockheed and Boeing are corporate sponsors of the Rockefeller/CFR. James Woolsey, Stephen Hadley, John Bolton, Eliot
Cohen and John McCain are CFR members. Also Bill Clinton, Janet Yellen, John Paulson, Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros. See member
lists at cfr dot org. Cohen, Bolton, Woolsey, and McCain were also members of PNAC.
Michael Flynn's book "Field of Fight" is co-authored by neocon Michael Ledeen, defender of Israel and
promoter of "universal fascism" . Ledeen
is a member of the "Foundation for Defense of Democracies" where Trump advisor James Woolsey is chairman. Woolsey, Clinton's ex-CIA
director, is also a member of the "Flynn Intel Group".
Agree...but, easier said than done. A large component of our economy is wholly dependent on government funded MIC and arms
sales. Dependency on government spending as large part of our economy has seeped into nearly every aspect of our market place.
The gov expansion into and control of the economy has so distorted the markets, and created so much dependency that we are
now in a situation where without it, our economy collapses. It would take decades to fix this problem without collapsing the economy
while you are doing it...
However, we would still feel the pain as we transition the economy. There is a problem with the long term approach...is
that the every attempt will be made to stop such a transition in its tracks. Even if it means world war.
With modern travel and communications neither policy would work any longer but I'll take nationalism. Bottom line on hawks,
the budget is busted out! Cant afford guns and butter anymore.
The empire building has made all but a few a lot poorer and the majority on earth more miserable. I am not naive, I know
violence is sometimes necessary, but eternal offence as a strategy ensures enemies will find ways to focus on that top dog and
beat you. Beside what I think or believe about foreign policy, it doesn't matter we are broke in affording empire. Period.
You guys crazy or sumpthin? You want full employment at good wages? All out War is your best bet. No messy "fixing" anything,
just flip the switch and off you go. Draft all those troublemakers, turn them into cannon fodder, crank up the printing presses
and happy days are here again.
Only those doped up hippies worry about nukes. Don't listen to them.
I hear you do not like yo read, but you must read this ZH post that neatly summarizes the NeoCon influence in Wash. which has
run it's course with little tangible returns and many negative debt outcomes including loss of millions of lives . Time to change
or face world condemnation worse than Germany received after WWII. America has always been regarded as a savior Nation until the
Neocons took over Wash. for narrow corporate, DOD and foreign interests.
You have now heard all the arguments and must decide---compromise will only lead to more strife and possible economic collapse.
This is the most important decision of your Presidency ---all other decisions and promises depend on this one.
Fuck those stinking neo-con bastards. We are not going to be fighting Israel's wars again. This is the United States, not Israel,
no matter how much jew money controls congress and no matter how much jew money controls the media. I hope Trump understands this
very clearly.
What is with you people? It is almost like Saudi Arabia doesn't exist and doesn't buy our politicians. It is almost as if
Hillary Clinton never existed, nor her Saudi asset girlfriend (yes, married to an Israeli asset). Look, if you're going to blame
the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis. And then you might want to also say fuck you to the British who are responsible
for both nations.
The reason "Islamophobia" is even a thing is because Saudis paid Jewish SJWs to make it a thing, all while they pay WASPs like
Bolton to go apeshit on non-Wahhabi Muslims.
Yes, before you even start, I'm aware of the claims that the Saudis are some sort of "crypto-Jews". Whatever. They need to
be named regardless.
I don't recall the US fighting any wars that would directly benefit Saudi Arabia. Sure, the Saudis have a lot of money, but they
are just a bunch of camel-fuckers who got rich because they are sitting on oil. They are still a bunch of dumb camel-fuckers.
They don't have any nukes. I imagine the Saudis do nothing without the approval of the CIA Israel is a whole different story.
Look, if you're going to blame the Jews every time, also blame the Wahhabis
Let's deconstruct this statement shall we:
1971 Nixon goes off gold standard. Why? Deficit spending on Vietnam War was causing European Central Banks to hold dollars
they didn't want. They bought gold with it rather than mainstreet American goods. This then started depleting American Gold...especially
to France.
1973 Nixon sends his special JEW Kissinger to Saudi. Why? To make the petrodollar a world standard.
The Saudi Kissinger deal: Saudi gets protection by American War Machine, they get to Cartelize with OPEC, they get transhipment
protection by U.S. Navy, Saudi Illegitimate Coup is OK'd and sanctioned by the West, they get front line American Gear. Today
that gear includes the latest Jets and AWAC's.
What does America get, especially the Western Illuminist Bankers? All Saudi Petrodollars are to cycle into Western Capital
Market, including Western Banks. Saudi's are to buy TBILLs with their petrodollars. All oil is to be priced in dollars, to then
create demand for said dollars. Saudi's do not get to own a powerful financial center. (Can you name me a powerful Saudi bank?)
Our Jewish friends are not stupid and have been running the money game since forever.
The Coup for Saudi was actually a British MI6 project. If you trace MI6 back in time, it was an arm of Bank of England. BOE
was brought into existence by Jewish Capital out of Amsterrrdaaaamn.
Wahabism/Salafism has been used since Reagan as a weapon for covert war. Saudi Petrodollars recycle back to the U.S. MIC
as they pass through the CIA Hillary Clinton approved very large increases in weapons to the Saudi's especially as they funded
the Clinton machine. Clintons are CFR agents, and that has a heavy jewish illuminst influence.
So- absolutely, the Salafists are on the side of our Illuminist friends.
The Shites, especially those of Iran/Persia - have had their "funds" absconded with and/or locked up.
So, which side of Islam has our Jewish Illuminist Cabal masters selected?
if you can post some reliable source material to support your post I'd like the see it. it generally tracks with my understanding
but i could use some solid source material.
if you can post some reliable source material to support your post I'd like the see i
Google 1973 Saudi Kissinger deal:
For BOE the sources are more obscure. I personally have tracked them through time using population statistics and the like.
I need to write a book, so I can quote myself.
BOE, Cromwell, the Orange Kings - the usurpation of England, are all related by way of Stock Market Capital in Amersterdamn.
You can trace our Jewish friends arrival in Amersterdamn with their loss of East West Mechanism (silver gold exchange rates on
the caravan routes). They lost it to the portuguese when Vasco de Gama discovered the Sourthern route.
The person who best cataloged these maneuvers was an american Alexander Del Mar - a great monetary historian. Look for his
books.
This stuff will take you years of effort, and I applaud anyone who takes it on.
For the circulation of dollars during Vietnam War, See Hudson's books... especially Super Imperialism
Dr. Bonzo •Nov 19, 2016 11:04 PM
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American
foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White
House.
In what fucking dimension do people this fucking incompetent still have jobs, let alone credibility? Preposterous that
they even still have jobs. The US has blown 5-6 trillion on losing one war after the other, has caused massive disorder and chaos
in the Mideast to absolutely no one's benefit except Israel, or so Israel believes, and destabilized the entire region to the
point that a WWIII could erupt at any moment.
Disaster and incompetence at this level can only be rewarded with sackings and terminations across the board. But no, not
in the US. The public is more preooccupied with fictional racists and Donald's bawdy pussy talk.
A nation of fucking morons. I swear.
Victor999 -> Dr. Bonzo •Nov 20, 2016 4:09 AM
You answered your own question....Israel is the first priority of American foreign policy - always.
Chaos is precisely what Israel ordered in order to weaken central governments of the ME and destroy their military capability.
WWIII? Doesn't matter in the least for Israel who will quietly stand aside and let the goyim fight it out, and then pick up the
remains. We're all fucking morons for allowing the Jews to take over our money supply, our government, our intelligence services,
our media - and hide themselves under the protective cloak of liberalism, political correctness and 'anti-Semitism' to shut down
all rational debate and guard them against 'discriminatory' practices.
Neochrome •Nov 19, 2016 11:06 PM
First of all, McStain should STFU, we'll send a nurse to change his depends, no need to get all cranky.
Giuliani's foreign expertise comes down apparently to be so "brave" to kick down Serbs when they are down and to proclaim to
their face that they have deserved to be bombarded.
Bolton is exactly opposite of everything that Trump campaigned on.
Again, Mitt doesn't look half-bad considering the alternatives...
Kagemusho •Nov 19, 2016 11:13 PM
The Elite always signal their intent through the Traditional Media...like this:
Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate Over U.S. Role
by Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, 21 August 2001
https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/empireOrNot.html
You will find the bastards were planning for war and just needed their Pearl Harbor 2 in order to launch it. The same PNAC,
Office of Special Plans NeoCon nutcases that want to get close to Trump were talking so glibly and blithely about 'empire'. I
knew even then that this was the Elite signaling intent, and we all know what happened a few weeks later. This article should
provide the benefit of hindsight when considering Cabinet postings. These NeoCon Israel-Firster assholes belong in prison for
war crimes!
Salzburg1756 •Nov 19, 2016 11:16 PM
neocon = Israel-Firster
If Trump disempowers them, he will be a great/good president.
the.ghost.of.22wmr -> Salzburg1756 •Nov 20, 2016 12:18 AM
Trump has been provided an easy litmus test, who has ever advocated deposing Assad must be rejected, not because Assad
is such a great guy, but because those who would replace him are radical islamists all. Russia could be cultivated as a friend
and do more for world peace than the Arab world which has a fatal jihad disease.
The Kurds have served our shared interests well , but like all Muslims have no real interest in becoming westernized and will
turn on us once they have achieved their goals.
UnschooledAustr... -> dunce •Nov 20, 2016 1:50 AM
You are wrong about the Kurds. Besides the Alevites the only sane people in this mess called the islamic world.
shovelhead -> dunce •Nov 20, 2016 9:35 AM
The Kurds are an ethnic identity, not a religious one. While most are of an Islamic rootstock, the are Kurds of various religious
beliefs. The Kurds are fighting for an autonomous region where all religions can co-exist without one being dominant and forcing
others to conform.
The Kurds problem is they are not physically separated by geography like Sicily, who falls under the Italian State but are
still distinctly Sicilian in language and culture while the outside world sees them as Italian.
The Kurds problem is that someone in Europe drew a line on a map without consulting them whether they wanted their traditional
homeland to be divided between three different countries.
Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 12:37 AM
BERNIE SANDERS would be a genius choice for Secretary of State. A kick in the teeth to the Clintonistas and the neocons, an
olive branch to liberals of good will, and a hilarious end to the American civil war that the MSM and Soros are trying to drum
up. Bernie's foreign policy was the only thing I
liked about him.
sinbad2 -> Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 1:02 AM
What a fantastic idea, political genius.
UnschooledAustr... -> Dabooda •Nov 20, 2016 1:30 AM
I - non-US citizen living in the US - frequently argued that I would have loved seeing Bernie run as VP for Trump.
Not a lot of people who got it. You did.
BTW: Fuck Soros.
Big Ben •Nov 20, 2016 12:51 AM
The presidency is more of a ceremonial position now. If the deep state doesn't like the president, it can simply fire him,
as it did with Kennedy (and arguably Nixon). It can also make his life a living hell or force a foreign policy showdown as it
did with Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs.
Incidentally, I've been looking at some websites that claim that the 911 attacks could not have happened the way the government
claimed. There were actually THREE buildings that collapsed: the North and South Towers and WTC7 which was never hit by an airplane.
The government claims it collapsed due to fires, but a whole bunch of architects and structural engineers say that isn't possible.
And if you look at the video of the collapse, it looks like a perfect controlled demolition. There have been a number of large
fires in steel framed skyscrapers and none of them has caused a collapse. And even if a fire somehow managed to produce a collapse,
it would create a messy uneven collapse where the parts with the hottest fires collapse first.
Controlled demolitions take weeks of planning and preparation. So the implication is that someone planned the WTC7 collapse
weeks in advance. WTC7 held a number of offices, including offices of the SEC. Many files were destroyed.
Also Steven Jones, a retired BYU physics professor and other scientists have found particles of thermite in the dust from the
North and South tower collapses. Thermite is an incendiary used to cut steel. This suggests that the collapse of the the North
and South Towers was also caused by something other than an airplane collision.
I have seen claims that GW Bush's younger brother was a high executive in the company that handled WTC security.
So were the 9/11 attacks a preplanned event designed to create support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq?
"... I don't think we should be a nation builder. ..."
"... I had to listen to [Senator] Lindsey Graham, who, give me a break. I had to listen to Lindsey Graham talk about, you know, attacking Syria and attacking, you know, and it's like you're now attacking Russia, you're attacking Iran, you're attacking. And what are we getting? We're getting - and what are we getting? ..."
"... I'd say this in front of thousands of people, wouldn't it be nice to actually report what they said, wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with Russia, ..."
FRIEDMAN: What do you see as America's role in the world? Do you believe that the role
TRUMP: That's such a big question.
FRIEDMAN: The role that we played for 50 years as kind of the global balancer, paying more for
things because they were in our ultimate interest, one hears from you, I sense, is really shrinking
that role.
TRUMP: I don't think we should be a nation builder. I think we've tried that. I happen to think
that going into Iraq was perhaps I mean you could say maybe we could have settled the civil war,
O.K.? I think going into Iraq was one of the great mistakes in the history of our country. I think
getting out of it - I think we got out of it wrong, then lots of bad things happened, including the
formation of ISIS. We could have gotten out of it differently.
FRIEDMAN: NATO, Russia?
TRUMP: I think going in was a terrible, terrible mistake. Syria, we have to solve that problem
because we are going to just keep fighting, fighting forever. I have a different view on Syria than
everybody else. Well, not everybody else, but then a lot of people.
I had to listen to [Senator]
Lindsey Graham, who, give me a break. I had to listen to Lindsey Graham talk about, you know, attacking
Syria and attacking, you know, and it's like you're now attacking Russia, you're attacking Iran,
you're attacking. And what are we getting? We're getting - and what are we getting?
And I have some
very definitive, I have some very strong ideas on Syria. I think what's happened is a horrible, horrible
thing. To look at the deaths, and I'm not just talking deaths on our side, which are horrible, but
the deaths - I mean you look at these cities, Arthur, where they're totally, they're rubble, massive
areas, and they say two people were injured. No, thousands of people have died. O.K. And I think
it's a shame. And ideally we can get - do something with Syria. I spoke to Putin, as you know, he
called me, essentially
UNKNOWN: How do you see that relationship?
TRUMP: Essentially everybody called me, all of the major leaders, and most of them I've spoken
to.
FRIEDMAN: Will you have a reset with Russia?
TRUMP: I wouldn't use that term after what happened, you know, previously. I think - I would love
to be able to get along with Russia and I think they'd like to be able to get along with us. It's
in our mutual interest. And I don't go in with any preconceived notion, but I will tell you, I would
say - when they used to say, during the campaign, Donald Trump loves Putin, Putin loves Donald Trump,
I said, huh, wouldn't it be nice, I'd say this in front of thousands of people, wouldn't it be nice
to actually report what they said, wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with Russia, wouldn't
it be nice if we went after ISIS together, which is, by the way, aside from being dangerous, it's
very expensive, and ISIS shouldn't have been even allowed to form, and the people will stand up and
give me a massive hand. You know they thought it was bad that I was getting along with Putin or that
I believe strongly if we can get along with Russia that's a positive thing. It is a great thing that
we can get along with not only Russia but that we get along with other countries.
JOSEPH KAHN, managing editor: On Syria, would you mind, you said you have a very strong idea about
what to do with the Syria conflict, can you describe that for us?
TRUMP: I can only say this: We have to end that craziness that's going on in Syria. One of the
things that was told to me - can I say this off the record, or is everything on the record?
"... News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. ..."
"... A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't) define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen if the Presidency consumes their lives ..."
"... If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform. ..."
My impression is that Donald Trump is planning or at least thinking of running the government
as a business, choosing people as cabinet secretaries on the basis of past experience and on what
they would bring to the position, as opposed to choosing cabinet secretaries because they have
been loyal yes-people (as Hillary Clinton would have done)
News that Trump might work 4 days a week as President, or at least work the same work week
as Congress does, would suggest he plans on running a lean government. At present the prevailing
attitude among Washington insiders and the corporate media is that Trump is not really that interested
in being President and isn't committed to the job 24/7.
A counter-argument that could be put forward is that the Presidency doesn't (and shouldn't)
define the office-holder's life and the Clintons themselves are an example of what can happen
if the Presidency consumes their lives: it can damage the individuals and in Hillary Clinton's
case, cut her off so much from ordinary people that it disqualifies her from becoming President
herself.
If it's Trump's intention to reform the political culture in Washington and make it more accountable
to the public, and bring the Presidency closer to the public, then defining the maximum limits
of the position on his time and sticking to them, perhaps through delegating roles and functions
to his cabinet secretaries, is one path to reform.
Donald Trump's success or failure as the next US president will largely depend on his ability to keep his independence from the "shadow
government" and elite structures that shaped the policies of previous administrations, former presidential candidate Ron Paul told
RT.
[...]
" Unfortunately, there has been several neoconservatives that are getting closer to Trump. And if gets his advice from them then
I do not think that is a good sign, " Paul told the host of RT's Crosstalk show Peter Lavelle.
The retired Congressman said that people voted for Trump because he stood against the deep corruption in the establishment, that
was further exposed during the campaign by WikiLeaks, and because of his disapproval of meddling in the wider Middle East.
" During the campaign, he did talk a little bit about backing off and being less confrontational to Russia and I like that. He
criticized some the wars in the Middle East at the same time. He believes we should accelerate the war against ISIS and terrorism,
" Paul noted.
[...]
" But quite frankly there is an outside source which we refer to as the 'deep state' or the 'shadow government'. There is a lot
of influence by people which are actually more powerful than our government itself, our president, " the congressman said.
" Yes, Trump is his own guy, more so than most of those who have ever been in before. We hope he can maintain an independence
and go in the right direction. But I fear the fact that there is so much that can be done secretly, out of control of our apparent
government and out of the view of so many citizens, " he added. More: https://www.rt.com/usa/366404-trump-ron-paul-crosstalk/
While focusing on preserving ObamaCare and other achievements of the Obama administration that are
threatened by a Donald Trump presidency, the DA's agenda includes panels on rethinking polling and
the left's approach to winning the working-class vote. The group will also stress funneling cash
into state legislative policy initiatives and races where Republicans took over last week.
President-elect Donald Trump has said his first 100 days will be dedicated to restoring "honesty,
accountability and change to Washington" through the following seven steps:
A Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress
A hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting
military, public safety, and public health)
A requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated
A five year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave
government service
A lifetime ban on the White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government
A complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections
Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's
water and environmental infrastructure
Billionaire George Soros immediately had fingers of blame pointing at him for the anti-Trump riots
and protests that swept the nation since Nov. 9, as
his group MoveOn.org has organized most of them .
The billionaire committed
$25 million to boosting the Clinton campaign and other Democratic candidates and causes in 2016.
Ran Paul was one of the few who understood how quickly Trump will betray his voters: "There was a time, a very brief
time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one." But
it looks like he shares most of illution about Trump ability to changethings to the better: " The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years.
"
Notable quotes:
"... Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions, policies and decisions. ..."
"... The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years. There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one. ..."
What happens next in Washington? Trump fills out his administration.
At the same time, Washington insiders attempt to capture Trump and influence his positions,
policies and decisions. The presidency is an institution, not a man, not a president. The presidency
is a network of enormous power with Trump now at its center.
Washington insiders who live and breathe politics are now in a race for positions of power and
influence. They hanker and vie for appointments. Trump must make appointments. He cannot operate
alone. He must delegate power to make decisions. He cannot monitor all information pertinent to every
issue in which the government has a hand.
The presidency is not 100 percent centralized. Decision-making power is allocated to levels below
the president himself and to levels surrounding him. It also lies outside the presidency in Congress.
Trump has his ideas and desires for actions, but their realization depends on the people he appoints.
He loses control and locks himself in with every appointment that he makes. People around him want
his power and want to influence him. They have a heavy influence on what he hears, whom he sees,
the options presented to him, and the evaluations of competing personnel. Trump will likely form
a very small team of offshoots of himself, people whom he trusts implicitly, in order to extend his
capacity to choose people who will adhere to and execute his agenda.
Power in Washington is not simply the apparatus of administering the presidency that will take
up headlines for the next few months. After the U.S. Treasury robs the tax-paying Americans, new
robbers (the Lobby) appear to rob the Treasury using every device they can get away with. There is
a second contingent, the power-seekers. Those who covet the exercise of power unceasingly work toward
their own narrow aims. As long as Washington remains the place that concentrates unbelievably large
amounts of money and powers, it will remain the swamp that Trump has promised to drain but won't.
He cannot drain it, not without destroying Washington's power and he cannot accomplish that, nor
does he even hint that he wants to accomplish that. His stated aims are the redirection of money
and powers, not their elimination for the sake of a greater justice, a greater right, and a truly
greater people and country.
The presidency is an establishment and Washington is another. By being elected, Trump struck
a blow at the members of the establishment who will be packing their bags while weeping over their
losses (see
here and
here .)
But elections do not strike the roots of the presidency, the establishment or Washington. Neither
will demonstrations against Trump.
The Obama establishment is dead. The Democratic establishment is dead, at least for 4 years.
There was a time, a very brief time under the Articles of Confederation, when Americans recognized
the evils of the establishment and avoided instituting one.
This gave way almost immediately (in 1787) to the constitutional seed that planted the enormous
tree that now cuts out the sun of justice from American lives. A domestic war failed to uproot that
tree. Long live the establishment, the Union, the American state, and may they be possessed of immense
powers over our lives - these became the social and political reality. Trump isn't going to change
it. He's a president administering a presidency. He's at the top of the heap. His credo is still
"Long Live the Establishment!"
Pretty interesting video... no we know that the Swamp consumed Flatfooted Donald rather quickly
Notable quotes:
"... Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture a Trump scandal ..."
"... Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice? ..."
"... FakeStream Media ..."
"... The very Fake Media has met their match ..."
Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture
a Trump scandal
Louis John 2 hours ago
@hexencoff
McCain is a trouble maker. supporter of the terrorist and warmonger Iraq Libya
Syria he is behind all the trouble scumbag
Gary M 3 hours ago
McCain is a globalist
belaghoulashi 2 hours ago
(edited) McCain has always been full of horseshit. And he has always relied on people calling
him a hero to get away with it. That schtick is old, the man is a monumental failure for this
country, and he needs to have his sorry butt kicked.
ryvr madduck 1 hour ago
+belaghoulashi
Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the
ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed
him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's
exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain
then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should
have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice?
Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
When you start to drain the swamp, the swamp creatures start to show.
Alexus Highfield 3 hours ago
@Michael Cambo
don't they...they do say shit floats.
Geoffry Allan 41 minutes ago
@Michael Cambo
- Trump has not drained the swamp he has surrounded himself with billionaires in his cabinet who
don't give a damn about the working middle class who struggle e eryday to make a living -
explain to me how he is draining the swamp
tim sparks 3 hours ago
Trump is trying so fucking hard to do a good job for us.
Integrity Truth-seeker 2 hours ago
@tim sparks
He is not trying... HE IS DOING IT... Like A Boss. Thank God Mark Taylor Prophecies
2017 the best is yet to come
Jodi Boin 3 hours ago
McCain is a traitor and is bought and paid for by Soros.
Grant Davidson 4 hours ago
Love him or hate him. The guy is a frikkin Genius...
Patrick Reagan 4 hours ago
FakeStream Media
Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
@Patrick Reagan
Very FakeStream Media
aspengold5 4 hours ago
I am so disappointed in McCain.
orlando pablo 4 hours ago
my 401k is keep on going up....thank u mr trump....
Dumbass Libtard 3 hours ago
McCain is not a Republican. He is a loser. Yuge difference.1
Mitchel Colvin 3 hours ago
Shut up McCain! I can't stand this clown anymore! Unfortunately, Arizona re-elected him for six
more years!
robert barham 4 hours ago
The very Fake Media has met their match
H My ways of thinking! 3 hours ago
Why does everyone feel that if they don't kiss McCain's ass, they are being un American? Mccain
has sold out to George Soros. He is a piece of shit who is guilty of no less than treason! Look
up the definition for treason if you're in doubt!
Sam Nardo 3 hours ago
(edited) Mc Cain and Graham are two of the best democrats in the GOP. They are called RINOS
kazzicup 3 hours ago
We love and support our President Donald Trump. The media is so dishonest. CNN = Criminal News
Network.
Geoffry Allan 34 minutes ago
@kazzicup - yeah if you get rid of the media Trump becomes
a dictator - is that what you want he will censor everything and tell you what he wants - Trump
is still president and he is doing his job and fulfilling his promises even though the media is
there and reporting - so what's the problem - I don't want a got damn dictator running this country
- if you don't like the media then just listen to Trump - 2nd amendment free speech and the right
to bear arms we have to respect it even if we may disagree
The United States should threaten Russia with military force in order to contain the Kremlin's growing
power on the international stage, a top candidate to become Donald Trump's Secretary of State has
said.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York Mayor
who is believed to be the front runner to head Mr Trump's
State Department, made the comments at a Washington event sponsored by the
Wall Street Journal
.
In
quotes | The Trump - Putin relationship
Putin on Trump:
"He is a very flamboyant man, very talented, no doubt about
that He is an absolute leader of the presidential race, as we see it today. He says that
he wants to move to another level of relations, to a deeper level of relations with Russia.
How can we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it." -
December 2015
Trump on Putin:
"It is always a great honour to be so nicely complimented by a
man so highly respected within his own country and beyond." -
December 2015
"I think I would just get along very well with Putin. I just
think so. People say what do you mean? I just think we would." -
July 2015
"I have no relationship with [Putin] other than he called me a
genius. He said Donald Trump is a genius and he is going to be the leader of the party and
he's going to be the leader of the world or something. He said some good stuff about me I
think I'd have a good relationship with Putin, who knows." -
February 2016
"I have nothing to do with Putin, I have never spoken to him, I
don't know anything about him, other than he will respect me." -
July 2016
"I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there's nothing I can
think of that I'd rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to how they are right now
so that we can go and knock out Isis together with other people. Wouldn't it be nice if we
actually got along?" -
July 2016
"The man has very strong control over a country. It's a very
different system and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system, he's
been a leader." -
September 2016
"Well I think when [Putin] called me brilliant, I'll take the
compliment, okay?" -
September 2016
Ron Paul was right in 2016 to express reservations about Trump forign policy.
Notable quotes:
"... Paul started off the interview saying that he is keeping his "fingers crossed" regarding Trump's potential foreign policy actions. ..."
"... Trump has presented "vague" foreign policy positions overall. Paul also comments that a good indication of how Trump will act on foreign policy issues will be provided by looking at who Trump appoints to positions in the executive branch and from whom Trump receives advice. ..."
"... Regarding Trump's foreign policy advisors and potential appointees, Paul expresses in the interview reason for concern. Paul states: "Unfortunately, there have been several neoconservatives that are getting closer to Trump, and, if he gets his advice from them, then I don't think that is a good sign." ..."
"... Even if Trump wants to pursue a significantly more noninterventionist course than his recent predecessors in the presidency, Paul warns that the entrenched "deep state" that favors foreign intervention and war, special interests that have "sinister motivation for these wars," and media propaganda that "builds up the war fever" can ..."
Ron Paul, known for his promotion of the United States following a noninterventionist foreign policy,
presented Thursday his take on the prospects of Donald Trump's foreign policy as president. Paul
set out his analysis in an extensive interview with host Peter Lavelle at RT.
Paul started off
the interview saying that he is keeping his "fingers crossed" regarding Trump's potential foreign
policy actions. Paul says he views favorably Trump's comments in the presidential election about
"being less confrontational with Russia" and criticizing some of the US wars in the Middle East.
Paul, though, notes that Trump has presented "vague" foreign policy positions overall. Paul also
comments that a good indication of how Trump will act on foreign policy issues will be provided by
looking at who Trump appoints to positions in the executive branch and from whom Trump receives advice.
Regarding Trump's foreign policy advisors and potential appointees, Paul expresses in the interview
reason for concern. Paul states: "Unfortunately, there have been several neoconservatives that are
getting closer to Trump, and, if he gets his advice from them, then I don't think that is a good
sign."
Even if Trump wants to pursue a significantly more noninterventionist course than his recent predecessors
in the presidency, Paul warns that the entrenched "deep state" that favors foreign intervention and
war, special interests that have "sinister motivation for these wars," and media propaganda that
"builds up the war fever" can
Pretty interesting video... no we know that the Swamp consumed Flatfooted Donald rather quickly
Notable quotes:
"... Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture a Trump scandal ..."
"... Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice? ..."
"... FakeStream Media ..."
"... The very Fake Media has met their match ..."
Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture
a Trump scandal
Louis John 2 hours ago
@hexencoff
McCain is a trouble maker. supporter of the terrorist and warmonger Iraq Libya
Syria he is behind all the trouble scumbag
Gary M 3 hours ago
McCain is a globalist
belaghoulashi 2 hours ago
(edited) McCain has always been full of horseshit. And he has always relied on people calling
him a hero to get away with it. That schtick is old, the man is a monumental failure for this
country, and he needs to have his sorry butt kicked.
ryvr madduck 1 hour ago
+belaghoulashi
Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the
ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed
him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's
exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain
then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should
have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice?
Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
When you start to drain the swamp, the swamp creatures start to show.
Alexus Highfield 3 hours ago
@Michael Cambo
don't they...they do say shit floats.
Geoffry Allan 41 minutes ago
@Michael Cambo
- Trump has not drained the swamp he has surrounded himself with billionaires in his cabinet who
don't give a damn about the working middle class who struggle e eryday to make a living -
explain to me how he is draining the swamp
tim sparks 3 hours ago
Trump is trying so fucking hard to do a good job for us.
Integrity Truth-seeker 2 hours ago
@tim sparks
He is not trying... HE IS DOING IT... Like A Boss. Thank God Mark Taylor Prophecies
2017 the best is yet to come
Jodi Boin 3 hours ago
McCain is a traitor and is bought and paid for by Soros.
Grant Davidson 4 hours ago
Love him or hate him. The guy is a frikkin Genius...
Patrick Reagan 4 hours ago
FakeStream Media
Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
@Patrick Reagan
Very FakeStream Media
aspengold5 4 hours ago
I am so disappointed in McCain.
orlando pablo 4 hours ago
my 401k is keep on going up....thank u mr trump....
Dumbass Libtard 3 hours ago
McCain is not a Republican. He is a loser. Yuge difference.1
Mitchel Colvin 3 hours ago
Shut up McCain! I can't stand this clown anymore! Unfortunately, Arizona re-elected him for six
more years!
robert barham 4 hours ago
The very Fake Media has met their match
H My ways of thinking! 3 hours ago
Why does everyone feel that if they don't kiss McCain's ass, they are being un American? Mccain
has sold out to George Soros. He is a piece of shit who is guilty of no less than treason! Look
up the definition for treason if you're in doubt!
Sam Nardo 3 hours ago
(edited) Mc Cain and Graham are two of the best democrats in the GOP. They are called RINOS
kazzicup 3 hours ago
We love and support our President Donald Trump. The media is so dishonest. CNN = Criminal News
Network.
Geoffry Allan 34 minutes ago
@kazzicup - yeah if you get rid of the media Trump becomes
a dictator - is that what you want he will censor everything and tell you what he wants - Trump
is still president and he is doing his job and fulfilling his promises even though the media is
there and reporting - so what's the problem - I don't want a got damn dictator running this country
- if you don't like the media then just listen to Trump - 2nd amendment free speech and the right
to bear arms we have to respect it even if we may disagree
So the coup against the President was exposed already in Jan 2017 and Trump did not take any measures to prevent the appointment
of the Special Prosecutor.
Notable quotes:
"... The stories about Russian intelligence supposedly filming Trump in a high-end Moscow hotel with prostitutes have been circulating around Washington for months. I was briefed about them by a Hillary Clinton associate who was clearly hopeful that the accusations would be released before the election and thus further damage Trump's chances. But the alleged video never seemed to surface and the claims had all the earmarks of a campaign dirty trick. ..."
"... However, now the tales of illicit frolic have been elevated to another level. They have been inserted into an official U.S. intelligence report, the details of which were leaked first to CNN and then to other mainstream U.S. news media outlets. ..."
"... In American history, legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was infamous for using his agency to develop negative information on a political figure and then letting the person know that the FBI had the dirt and certainly would not want it to become public – if only the person would do what the FBI wanted, whether that was to reappoint Hoover to another term or to boost the FBI's budget or – in the infamous case of civil rights leader Martin Luther King – perhaps to commit suicide. ..."
"... Still, perhaps the more troubling issue is whether the U.S. intelligence community has entered a new phase of politicization in which its leadership feels that it has the responsibility to weed out "unfit" contenders for the presidency. During the general election campaign, a well-placed intelligence source told me that the intelligence community disdained both Clinton and Trump and hoped to discredit both of them with the hope that a more "acceptable" person could move into the White House for the next four years. ..."
"... Then, after the election, President Obama's CIA began leaking allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin had orchestrated the hacking of Democratic emails and provided them to WikiLeaks to reveal how the DNC undermined Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign and what Clinton had told Wall Street bigwigs in paid speeches that she had sought to keep secret from the American people. ..."
"... Now, we are seeing what looks like a new phase in this "stop (or damage) Trump" strategy, the inclusion of anti-Trump dirt in an official intelligence report that was then leaked to the major media. ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... There are moments in history when it seems almost the entire population of a nation has been struck with deafness and blindess. This maybe one such moment for the United States as a political elite begins the process of tearing the Union apart. ..."
"... The Craft of Intelligence, by Allen Dulles, (1965, if memory serves; alas, that book's text seems unavailable on the internet) ..."
"... At Kent State the National Guard was quite willing to shoot "their own people". The increasingly militarized Police of the US have been getting lots of practice shooting at "their own people". ..."
"... I'm wondering if we are seeing the beginnings of a President Pence. ..."
"... Why are you in the US so keen on destroying any credibility of your government? ..."
Exclusive: President-elect Trump is fending off a U.S. intelligence leak of unproven allegations
that he cavorted with Russian prostitutes, but the darker story might be the CIA's intervention in
U.S. politics, reports Robert Parry.
The decision by the U.S. intelligence community to include in an official report some unverified
and salacious accusations against President-elect Donald Trump resembles a tactic out of FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information
about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press.
Legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
In this case, as leaders of the U.S. intelligence community were pressing Trump to accept their
assessment that the Russian government had tried to bolster Trump's campaign by stealing and leaking
actual emails harmful to Hillary Clinton's campaign, Trump was confronted with this classified "appendix"
describing claims about him cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.
Supposedly, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan included
the unproven allegations in the report under the rationale that the Russian government might have
videotaped Trump's misbehavior and thus could use it to blackmail him. But the U.S. intelligence
community also had reasons to want to threaten Trump who has been critical of its performance and
who has expressed doubts about its analysis of the Russian "hacking."
After the briefing last Friday, Trump and his incoming administration did shift their position,
accepting the intelligence community's assessment that the Russian government hacked the emails of
the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta. But I'm told Trump saw
no evidence that Russia then leaked the material to WikiLeaks and has avoided making that concession.
Still, Trump's change in tone was noted by the mainstream media and was treated as an admission
that he was abandoning his earlier skepticism. In other words, he was finally getting onboard the
intelligence community's Russia-did-it bandwagon. Now, however, we know that Trump simultaneously
had been confronted with the possibility that the unproven stories about him engaging in unorthodox
sex acts with prostitutes could be released, embarrassing him barely a week before his inauguration.
The classified report, with the explosive appendix, was also given to President Obama and the
so-called "Gang of Eight," bipartisan senior members of Congress responsible for oversight of the
intelligence community, which increased chances that the Trump accusations would be leaked to the
press, which indeed did happen.
Circulating Rumors
The stories about Russian intelligence supposedly filming Trump in a high-end Moscow hotel with
prostitutes have been
circulating around Washington for months. I was briefed about them by a Hillary Clinton associate
who was clearly hopeful that the accusations would be released before the election and thus further
damage Trump's chances. But the alleged video never seemed to surface and the claims had all the
earmarks of a campaign dirty trick.
However, now the tales of illicit frolic have been elevated to another level. They have been inserted
into an official U.S. intelligence report, the details of which were leaked first to CNN and then
to other mainstream U.S. news media outlets.
Trump has denounced the story as "fake news" and it is certainly true that the juicy details –
reportedly assembled by a former British MI-6 spy named Christopher Steele – have yet to check out.
But the placement of the rumors in a U.S. government document gave the mainstream media an excuse
to publicize the material.
It's also allowed the media to again trot out the Russian word "kompromat" as if the Russians
invented the game of assembling derogatory information about someone and then using it to discredit
or blackmail the person.
In American history, legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was infamous for using his agency
to develop negative information on a political figure and then letting the person know that the FBI
had the dirt and certainly would not want it to become public – if only the person would do what
the FBI wanted, whether that was to reappoint Hoover to another term or to boost the FBI's budget
or – in the infamous case of civil rights leader Martin Luther King – perhaps to commit suicide.
However, in this case, it is not even known whether the Russians have any dirt on Trump. It could
just be rumors concocted in the middle of a hard-fought campaign, first among Republicans battling
Trump for the nomination (this opposition research was reportedly initiated by backers of Sen. Marco
Rubio in the GOP race) before being picked up by Clinton supporters for use in the general election.
Still, perhaps the more troubling issue is whether the U.S. intelligence community has entered
a new phase of politicization in which its leadership feels that it has the responsibility to weed
out "unfit" contenders for the presidency. During the general election campaign, a well-placed intelligence
source told me that the intelligence community disdained both Clinton and Trump and hoped to discredit
both of them with the hope that a more "acceptable" person could move into the White House for the
next four years.
Hurting Both Candidates
Though I was skeptical of that information, it did turn out that FBI Director James Comey, one
of the top officials in the intelligence community, badly damaged Clinton's campaign by deeming her
handling of her emails as Secretary of State "extremely careless" but deciding not to prosecute her
– and then in the last week of the campaign briefly reopening and then re-closing the investigation.
Then, after the election, President Obama's CIA began leaking allegations that Russian President
Vladimir Putin had orchestrated the hacking of Democratic emails and provided them to WikiLeaks to
reveal how the DNC undermined Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign and what Clinton had told Wall Street
bigwigs in paid speeches that she had sought to keep secret from the American people.
The intelligence community's assessment set the stage for what could have been a revolt by the
Electoral College in which enough Trump delegates could have refused to vote for him to send the
election into the House of Representatives, where the states would choose the President from one
of the top three vote-getters in the Electoral College. The third-place finisher turned out to be
former Secretary of State Colin Powell who got four votes from Clinton delegates in Washington State.
But the Electoral College ploy failed when Trump's delegates proved overwhelmingly faithful to the
GOP candidate.
Now, we are seeing what looks like a new phase in this "stop (or damage) Trump" strategy, the
inclusion of anti-Trump dirt in an official intelligence report that was then leaked to the major
media.
Whether this move was meant to soften up Trump or whether the intelligence community genuinely
thought that the accusations might be true and deserved inclusion in a report on alleged Russian
interference in U.S. politics or whether it was some combination of the two, we are witnessing a
historic moment when the U.S. intelligence community has deployed its extraordinary powers within
the domain of U.S. politics. J. Edgar Hoover would be proud.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press
and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either
in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com ).
Excuse the mixed metaphors, but this looks like another entirely predictable nail in the coffin
of US democracy, as the chickens come home to roost. For some time it has been quite obvious the
CIA has been pulling strings from behind the scenes to make whatever puppet occupies the White
House dance to its tune. But it won't end there. Only when the CIA climbs completely out of the
coffin can the epic finale between the CIA, FBI and NSA begin.
The big question is as to how long the people of states like Texas and Florida stand by in
the wings as the theater catches fire.
There are moments in history when it seems almost the entire population of a nation has been
struck with deafness and blindess. This maybe one such moment for the United States as a political
elite begins the process of tearing the Union apart.
Jean-David , January 12, 2017 at 11:22 am
Don't mix your metaphors before they are hatched. ;-)
Reply
Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 2:05 pm
There are moments in history when it seems almost the entire population of a nation has
been struck with deafness and blindess. This maybe one such moment for the United States as a
political elite begins the process of tearing the Union apart.
The United States has been accused of decadence for decades by Americans and non-Americans
without much concern being shown by anyone not in a certain minority. The great tragedy of a decadent
way of life is its durability.
In 1961 William Lederer's book, "A Nation of Sheep" revealed the abuse of American power and
the ignorance of the American people regarding this misrule. Nothing much has changed since then
except the names of the aggressors and their primary geographic areas of intended domination.
The mass of people are essentially clueless and content to believe whatever lies and salacious
tales are told them from the nation's Towers of Babel. This is in line with human history that
shows people of authoritarian dispositions tend to be more aggressive and dominant in politics
and commerce and the masses accept their lot as long as they get enough crumbs from establishment's
plate..
(The title of the book was also an insult to sheep, but that is another story.)
The saying goes, "power corrupts," but i believe that it is the corrupt who seek power to begin
with.
Most people are content to live and let live, to live by the golden rule, mind their own and reciprocate
kindness etc., etc.
Then there are those who get a thrill from exercising control over others. Those are the ones
who shoot straight to the top.
Jack Flanigan , January 14, 2017 at 1:47 am
An interesting and clear observation. As an australian I note our system is dominated by two
major parties (and I mean dominated) similar to the US. The two parties are vehicles for ambitious
and corrupt individuals to fast track political careers. The power rests in these organizations
and attracts the corrupt like bees to honey.
Reply
Curious , January 12, 2017 at 6:09 pm
Bill, regarding your sense of human history I might add that for many centuries people couldn't
read, except for the aristocracy and the religious sects mostly. The reformation produced a 100
year war and literacy was at an all time low in Luthers time but something motivated them to fight
for such a long time, and it wasn't information nor intellect.
Where has our literacy gone which would prevent a repeat of endless war and violence these
days? Oh yes, corporate controlled media hiring people who are certain to have no critical thinking
skills, no moral rudder, nor worldly experience to shed the scales from their eyes. We are almost
in pre-Gutenberg times of short attention spans and 140 character 'news truths' covering the landscape
of the ignorant. One can only hope the Tower of the oligarchs Babel has rapidly decaying clay
feet. We certainly know how to reduce cultures more ancient than ours to ashes without so much
as a second thought regarding the sanctity of life. Where are all the pro-lifers now? Oh yeh,
that's only in the womb, and after the umbilical cord is cut they are fair game for destruction.
The US values we rave about will really hurt when other cultures treat us as they have been treated.
Curious , January 12, 2017 at 6:32 pm
Or better yet, we are in Gutenberg times where the "type" is set by the big players and the
papers around the country keep the same type and only add ink. It's their only function now at
the national level to inhibit discourse, excluding this site of course.
Reply
Curious , January 12, 2017 at 6:34 pm
Or better yet, we are in times of the early press machines, where the "type" is set by the
big players and the papers around the country keep the same type and only add ink. It's their
only function now at the national level, meant to inhibit discourse and ideas. (excluding this
site of course)
Reply
Wendi , January 12, 2017 at 5:41 pm
In its Hoover relation, this article reprises the passage in The Craft of Intelligence, by
Allen Dulles, (1965, if memory serves; alas, that book's text seems unavailable on the internet).
It describes the power struggle involved post-FDR, during-HST 1946-48, at the institution of
the CIA (The Agency was not legislatively enacted, only instituted through Executive Order.)
Hoover opposed the creation of an intelligence collection that would compete with the FBI's monopoly
of spies snoops and snitches.
The compromise settlement set the FBI with domestic coverage and the CIA with international
haunts for its spooks.
Come the the present day, they still have turf wars in power rivalry for budget money.
However, in effect, after the budget shuffle the two legions merge their 'assets' - making each
one double its real size. They join in advocating for (the oxymoronic) 'authoritarian morality,'
gaining both the unlawfulness funded in the Judiciary with same unlawfulness, (or, being 'outlaw,'
'above the law'), funded by the Executive.
You can depend that they employ the same techniques. Coercion, extortion, blackmail, assassination,
torture, defamation, slander and Press Release aspersion. The polity is hung pendant on those
strings the outlaws pull. Or, 'hanged' pendant.
As Hoover, so Clapper et al.
Trump seems to have reconsided, maybe recanted, his defiance of 'intelligence' after he has
seen some truth in it regarding things he knows he did in places he knows he was. He knows he
dare not let the public see him through the cyclopian 'eye' of the intelligentia illumination.
_____
My wit sez, Lo! That explains his undocumented wife - he heard about Russian mail-order brides
and flew off to visit the showroom. And brought back some capital equipment, manufactured in foreign
lands.
Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:04 pm
The Craft of Intelligence, by Allen Dulles, (1965, if memory serves; alas, that book's
text seems unavailable on the internet)
Try alibris or abebooks dot coms. They have copies.
Good comment Bryan, but I wonder if we should pay attention at all to this decline of everything,
not only of democracy. Yet, I wish to highlight two humorous comments which best characterise
the situation.
The first one was a title I saw on Russia-Insider website: "Trump watch out! John Brennan throws
even a kitchen sink at Trump in desperation."
The other was a comment by a zero-hedge reader: "Trump could have had sex with a goat in a
Moscow hotel room and be videod as much as I care if he only delivers on his election promises.
I voted based on his policy promises, not on his sexual preferences."
The sexual smear is so 20th century, the same as the CIA – obsolete.
Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 11:39 am
To continue on the humorous side, the vile RT has one on the Pornhub reporting a huge increase
in searches for "Golden Showers". Perhaps the kiddies are adding a new term to their vocabularies.
It seems that Trump supporters are many and varied, and very loyal. To pretend that all these
shenanigans were needed to help elect him against such a faulty candidate as Hillary is pathetic
in the extreme. The terrible results, when we see how the new Administration is being gently helped
by the Senate including Democrats, will be bad for us all if their warlike statements lead to
facts. However, Obama's sending of 2800 tanks and 4000 troops to help Germany(!) and Poland against
"Russian aggression" right now, plus Hillary's promises, do not give a hopeful alternative scenario
for the "land of the free" or peace on earth.
Reply
W. R. Knight , January 12, 2017 at 11:06 am
The saddest part of this entire debacle is that the intelligence agencies, as well as main
stream media, the president and most members of Congress have destroyed their own credibility.
Lacking credibility, they cannot be believed; and when they cannot be believed, they cannot be
trusted; and a government that cannot be trusted is doomed.
J. D. , January 12, 2017 at 1:35 pm
Trump proved more feisty than expected at his first press conference as President-Elect, hitting
back at both Buzzfeed ('You're fake news" and CNN ("you're organization is terrible") And went
on to say that "If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what, folks? That's called an asset, not a
liability," describing the urgency of cooperation in defeating terrorism. Lost in the shuffle
however was the source of the lies - British intelligence agencies.In fact, the NYTimes reported
Jan. 6 that the official report released last week by the US intelligence agencies, which accused
Putin of subverting the U.S. election, also came from British intelligence, which "raised an alarm
that Moscow had hacked into the Democratic National Committee's computer servers, and alerted
their American counterparts.Talk about foreign interference.
Get with the program! We are supposed to believe that all we have heard from and about the
CIA in this century was pure and innocent incompetence, and should therefore continue to put all
of our faith in their motives and methods.
Reply
The entire sordid mess needs to be dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt from the ground up.
Washington should be razed to the ground. It is beyond rescuing. it is beyond saving. It is rotten
from the foundations to the pinicle of the obilisk. The American People should declare war on
Washington DC and invade the place and clean house. Bring the Guillotine along with them and the
baskets for the heads.
The stench is overwhelming. It needs to be cleaned up. No it needs to be wiped from the face
of the earth. One of the founding fathers said that periodically, the tree of democracy had to
be watered with blood. That time has arrived.
Reply
Znam Svashta , January 12, 2017 at 11:22 am
George Orwell predicted our current mess in his classic, "1984". Interestingly, that was the
year that the neocons took over the Pentagon's Office of Risk Assessment, the State Department,
and the whore-house American media.
Reply
Lin Cleveland , January 12, 2017 at 11:50 am
What's going on here? I think Julian Assange may be on to something. ( my bold )
"Hillary Clinton's election would have been a consolidation of power in the existing ruling
class of the United States. Donald Trump is not a D.C. insider , he is part of
the wealthy ruling elite of the United States, and he is gathering around him a spectrum of
other rich people and several idiosyncratic personalities. They do not by themselves form an
existing structure, so it is a weak structure which is displacing and destabilizing the pre-existing
central power network within D.C. It is a new patronage structure which will evolve rapidly,
but at the moment its looseness means there are opportunities for change in the United States:
change for the worse and change for the better."–Julian Assange
floyd gardner , January 12, 2017 at 2:02 pm
Thanks, Lin [for your 'bold.' Assange and Snowden are two voices "in the wilderness" always
worth listening to.
Reply
Jessejean , January 12, 2017 at 2:10 pm
Brilliant– as always. No matter how vilified JA is and no matter how much he's lied about,
he still is a force for reason and subversion, both of which we desparately need. Thanks for the
quote.
Reply
D5-5 , January 12, 2017 at 4:50 pm
Curious to me in the two-pronged attack on Trump (a. demonizing to delegitimize and replace
with Pence coming from the political establishment; b. hysterical fear of Trump coming from left
wing journalism sources including left-oriented alternative news sites) is why the hysteria in
the left continues so virulently. Assange's comment, to me, is balanced and sober. We don't know
what will happen out of Trump and his collection of "idiosyncratic personalities," we don't know
what will turn out "change for the worse and change for the better," and all the fear-mongering
from people like Robert Reich, appearing regularly in Truthdig, is entirely speculative. I then
question–would these same people on the left, that I once thought to be colleagues, prefer Hillary
Clinton and "consolidation of power in the existing ruling class"? This fracturing in what I had
thought was an intelligent left opposition is disturbing.
As an "old leftie" myself, I'd have to agree with Paul Craig Roberts that there IS no left
anymore. It was co-opted and bought by Big Money. Maybe we need to forget about "left" and "right"
and operate according to our own minds rather tha taking our cues from apologists for the establishment
like Robert Reich. But it sounds like you're already doing that.
Reply
Mark West , January 12, 2017 at 5:10 pm
Change that will undoubtedly benefit the privileged in a big way.
I don't give a crap about if Trump had prostitutes. That's between he and his wife. What I
do care about is if there are Trump financial threads to Russia and if his team had illegal meetings
with Moscow before the election. There are too many questions that need to be answered.
Why does Trump continue to dote on Putin? He's a vicious killer who has no qualms of eliminating
his opponents. Those are facts.
Why won't he release his tax returns? It could only mean he is hiding something.
What benefit does the world intelligence community gain in smearing a president elect? Is it
financial? idealogical? Power? Are they not tied and beholdened more to the entrenched financial
hierarchies then to the ever changing political landscape?
What advantage did this operative from British intelligence gain from compiling this info?
Money, fame, a 2nd home in Portugal?
How does anyone watching that press conference not come away with the chilly realization that
our president-elect is psychologically impaired? My god you don't have to be a trained psychologist
to see the guy has some serious mental health issues.
Anna , January 12, 2017 at 9:54 pm
"He's a vicious killer " – this is a music for the Kagans' clan
Reply
JayHobeSound , January 13, 2017 at 4:10 am
"What advantage did this operative from British intelligence gain from compiling this info?"
Reportedly he asked his neighbours to feed his cats and he went into hiding. Bizarre.
'Why does Trump continue to dote on Putin? He's a vicious killer who has no qualms of eliminating
his opponents. Those are facts.'
Facts? I'm pretty familiar with Putin's career and I've seen nothing to suggest that Putin is
a killer at all.
Can you provide links to evidence? Not just links to other people making assertions without evidence,
please.
Reply
Truth First , January 13, 2017 at 6:20 pm
"Why does Trump continue to dote on Putin? He's a vicious killer who has no qualms of eliminating
his opponents. Those are facts."
You talking about Trump or Putin? In any case has Russia or Putin killed as many people as America
or Obama. The "facts" say no, not even close.
Reply
stinky rafsanjani , January 16, 2017 at 9:36 am
vicious killer? since when is that a bad thing? jinkies, obama of nobel fame
sends missiles and drones around the planet, bombing and killing for fun and
profit. why, he even orders the assassination of citizens of his own country,
without trial even. meanwhile, putin has, umm look! a squirrel!
James van Oosterom , January 16, 2017 at 11:45 am
Nobody said it was a bad thing. You're inferring things. Stick to squirrels . Ah yes, the door .
Reply
Andreas Wirsén , January 12, 2017 at 11:54 am
A "new phase" in Intelligence meddling with presidential candidates, yes – but only in how
openly they stand behind it as the source. Campaigns to scandalize unwanted primary challengers
have been alleged before. Senator Gary Hart, for one, has said in interviews he believes he was
caught in a honey trap, which cost him his candidacy.
floyd gardner , January 12, 2017 at 2:08 pm
Gary Hart, a potentially strong contender, was also [like Trump] not up to Deep State's standards
in Russophobia.
Reply
LongGoneJohn , January 12, 2017 at 12:04 pm
Didn't Trump just acknowledge that attacks on cyber US infrastructure including the DNC takes
place, in a general way? That is what his statement read and to me that does not sound like "Trump
acknowledges Russian DNC hack" at all.
So is it me, or ?
floyd gardner , January 12, 2017 at 2:12 pm
No, LGJ, it's not just you who can read through MSMB[ullsh t.]
Reply
Michael Morrissey , January 12, 2017 at 12:05 pm
If Trump & Co. accept "the intelligence community's assessment that the Russian government
hacked the emails," they are only saying that, as is common knowledge, everybody hacks everybody.
This is not, as Parry says, an acceptance of the intelligence "assessment" that Putin or Russian
hackers released the emails, or even got them. Assange and Murray have said unequivocally that
the source was inside the DNC, which means it cannot have been the Russians.
Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 1:07 pm
Assange and Murray have said unequivocally that the source was inside the DNC, which means
it cannot have been the Russians.
Assange and Murray might be right, and they might not. There is a term being tossed around
– "cutout". Just because an intermediary claims to be a DNC leaker doesn't mean he actually was
such.
Under the circumstances I just don't care. Now if the Russians or Chinese or Ugandans or anybody
else had done more than facilitate the release of true information useful to voters, I'd be agitated
myself. Not that I'd expect anybody else to be. US votes have been hacked ever since the no-verify
touchscreen devices were first introduced, and nobody in authority has given a hoot about it.
Jessejean , January 12, 2017 at 2:18 pm
Zachary–you are so right. It drives me crazy that Bush got away with stealing the voting system
and all the Damn Dems care about is using it themselves. And now it drives me crazy that the Clintonistas
took down Bernie and are getting away with it. With that cat's paw Obusha hanging around to "work"
on rebuilding the DNC, we'll never see democracy again.
Sam F , January 13, 2017 at 6:52 am
We must indeed Dump the Dems. We need a progressive party.
There is a strong progressive majority everywhere which is being deliberately fragmented by
the Dems. In the US, Clinton supporters must unify not only with the critics of Dem warmongering
for Israel and KSA, but also with the Trumpers who want economic security in a rapacious oligarchic
state. Clinton supporters will have to admit their mistake and abandon the Dems as a scam of oligarchy
serving only as a backstop for the Repubs.
The solution is for a third party to align moderate progressives (national health care, no
wars of choice, income security) with parts of the traditional right (fundamentalists, flag-wavers,
make America great) leaving out only the extreme right (wars, discrimination, big business imperialism),
use individual funding, and rely upon broad platform appeal to marginalize the Dems as the third
party.
RMDC , January 13, 2017 at 9:28 am
Sam F. I agree with you but you have to stop using the term "progressive." The Clinton faction
of the demo party owns that term. It arose with John Podesta's Center for American Progress. Podesta
is the ideologue of contemporary progressivism. It has nothing to do with the Progressive movement
of the early 20th century.
The right term is Sander's term: Democratic Socialism. I know socialism is a problematic term,
too, but at least it is now claimed by the right people.
Sam F , January 13, 2017 at 2:20 pm
RMDC: Do you think "Progressive" can be brought back to its original meaning, or given a better
one, despite people falsely claiming to be progressive? Sanders' term might be incorporated into
that. It would be nice to deny the fakers the use of it.
Truth First , January 13, 2017 at 6:23 pm
"we'll never see democracy again."
Humm? When did we last see that "democracy" thing?
Reply
Bill Cash , January 12, 2017 at 12:08 pm
Trump could end all this by releasing his tax returns but he won't do it. I believe the intelligence
community had fears that once inaugurated, Trump would squash the whole thing. The Russian connection
is the only theory that connects all the dots. I'm waiting t see what happens with Assange. Will
he suddenly be able to go to Sweden?
As far as Trump's behavior, don't forget he was accused of raping a 13 year old girl but the woman
had to withdraw the suit because her life was threatened.
Why is your post such a strong reminder of Pizzagate?
Reply
Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:48 pm
Wont make any difference what t he does. He's an outsider. There's no escape except trying
& convicting the traitors running obama.
Reply
Wm. Boyce , January 12, 2017 at 12:14 pm
Very interesting column. I guess Mr. Trump is getting a lesson in who really runs things around
here.
Reply
Patricia Victour , January 12, 2017 at 12:22 pm
Unless Trump killed a prostitute on film, how could whatever is on the alleged video be any
worse than the pussy-grabbing debacle and all the other accusations of sexual predation? I don't
think you can embarrass Trump. He would just brush it off, and his base would probably think he
was a super stud.
Wm. Boyce , January 12, 2017 at 12:52 pm
Oh, I don't know, they could well have much worse stuff to leak, given Mr. Trump's complete
lack of control of his desires.
Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 12:59 pm
I collected a lot of "stuff" on Trump from the internet in the past year, and was surprised
to see virtually none of it used against him. My best guess is that Hillary & Co. didn't think
it was necessary against their carefully selected "easiest" opponent. That "stuff" is still available,
and might well be used to buttress wilder and unverifiable claims.
col from oz , January 12, 2017 at 7:49 pm
Yesterday on anther site i wrote how Hillary was complicit in a very serious charge.
Please watch video titles, where is Eric braverman on you tube . I have watched some and most
of the material gives you the reality of what is occurring. A example is this. A fact is Gaddafi
wanted to have some kind of gold backed Dina money policy. Fact. So Libya had a lot of gold maybe
hundreds of tons. Where is it now. Did the "invaders' get it with their usual cut out Libyan man?
In the spirit of trying to make a better world i put this up, it seems political unbiased however
it shows the Clinton as they are?
"Libya's Qadhafi (African Union 2009 Chair) conceived and financed a plan to unify the sovereign
States of Africa with one gold currency (United States of Africa). In 2004, a pan-African Parliament
(53 nations) laid plans for the African Economic Community – with a single gold currency by 2023.
"African oil-producing nations were planning to abandon the petro-dollar, and demand gold payment
for oil/gas Qaddafi had done more than organize an African monetary coup. He had demonstrated
that financial independence could be achieved. His greatest infrastructure project, the Great
Man-made River, was turning arid regions into a breadbasket for Libya; and the $33 billion project
was being funded interest-free without foreign debt, through Libya's own state-owned bank.
That could explain why this critical piece of infrastructure was destroyed in 2011. NATO not only
bombed the pipeline but finished off the project by bombing the factory producing the pipes necessary
to repair it."
Speaking of "leaks", isn't the specific accusation in this case that Trump paid a prostitute
to "take a leak" on the bed where he believed the Obamas had spent the night? (So I guess it was
the prostitute that had "worse stuff to leak"!)
Gregory Herr , January 12, 2017 at 8:58 pm
And while no one at Trump's press conference mentioned the specifics, Trump stated, "Does anyone
really believe that story? I'm also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me."
The Saker writes in "The Neocon's Declaration of War Against Trump":
"After several rather lame false starts, the Neocons have now taken a step which can only be
called a declaration of war against Donald Trump. [ ] All of the above further confirms to me
what I have been saying over the past weeks: if Trump ever makes it into the White House (I write
'if' because I think that the Neocons are perfectly capable of assassinating him), his first priority
should be to ruthlessly crack down as hard as he legally can against those in the US "deep state"
(which very much includes the media) who have now declared war on him. I am sorry to say that,
but it will be either him or them – one of the parties here will be crushed. [ ]
As I predicted it before the election, the USA are about to enter the worst crisis in their
history. We are entering extraordinarily dangerous times. If the danger of a thermonuclear war
between Russia and the USA had dramatically receded with the election of Trump, the Neocon total
war on Trump put the United States at very grave risk, including civil war (should the Neocon
controlled Congress impeach Trump I believe that uprisings will spontaneously happen, especially
in the South, and especially in Florida and Texas). At the risk of sounding over the top, I will
say that what is happening now is putting the very existence of the United States in danger almost
regardless of what Trump will personally do. Whatever we may think of Trump as a person and about
his potential as a President, what is certain is that millions of American patriots have voted
for him to "clear the swamp", give the boot to the Washington-based plutocracy and restore what
they see as fundamental American values. If the Neocons now manage to stage a coup d'etat against
Trump, I predict that these millions of Americans will turn to violence to protect what they see
as their way of life
If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President à la Hillary or McCain gives the
order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could see
what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot at their
own people. That is the biggest and ultimate danger for the Neocons: the risk that if they give
the order to crack down on the population the police, security and military services might simply
refuse to take action. If that could happen in the "KGB-controlled country" (to use a Cold War
cliché) this can also happen in the USA."
Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 12:54 pm
If a coup is staged against Trump and some wannabe President à la Hillary or McCain gives
the order to the National Guard or even the US Army to put down a local insurrection, we could
see what we saw in Russia in 1991: a categorical refusal of the security services to shoot
at their own people.
At Kent State the National Guard was quite willing to shoot "their own people". The increasingly
militarized Police of the US have been getting lots of practice shooting at "their own people".
I suspect that's why a great many of them joined up in the first place. Finally, carefully chosen
drone operators thousands or tens of thousands of miles away won't have the slightest problem
slaughtering evildoers. That's what they do all the time in their regular jobs.
Brad Owen , January 12, 2017 at 3:44 pm
Don't forget veterans, millions of them. When THEY stepped up to the North Dakota pipeline,
security forces backed off. Backwards' described scenario could be our "1991" moment to break
free and break the Deep State, and reinstating Glass-Steagall would break their Imperial paymasters
in The City and The Street. A new World could suddenly come about, faster than even the USSR/Warsaw
Pact disappeared.
Reply
Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:14 pm
At Kent State the National Guard was quite willing to shoot "their own people". The increasingly
militarized Police of the US have been getting lots of practice shooting at "their own people".
Police departments all over the U.S. and other nations have a long history of acting as goon
squads and occasional firing squads for their local establishments. Lots of examples in labor
histories.
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Peter Loeb , January 13, 2017 at 8:23 am
KILLING OUR OWN PEOPLE .
Special thanks to Zachary Smith.
In the US it's called "heroism", patriotism" and the rest. But if we are
inconvenienced to kill our own people, we can kill other peoples'
people. Gigantic weapons deals to Saudi Arabia and Israel
are proof of that.
By the way, did anyone happen to notice in the NDAA (Defense Authorization
Act) the increase of funds to rebels in another country whose goal is to
defeat the Syrian Government?
-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
PS For those who object to our killing our own people in the US join
Black Lives Matter.
Reply
Oleg , January 13, 2017 at 2:53 am
At the very least, the US should get rid of this prolonged waiting period between the elections
and actual assuming power by the president-elect. It was meant to facilitate the orderly transition
of power, but as we see now it is serving just the opposite goals. I cannot believe Obama is so
keen on hurting Trump he is ready to badly hurt his own country as well.
Reply
Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 12:37 pm
Whether this move was meant to soften up Trump
The motive I see is to "soften" him up for his impeachment. Given Trump's temperament, it could
be a winning strategy for the people who prefer President Pence. In my barely informed opinion,
that would include a majority of both parties in both houses of the US congress.
Joe Tedesky , January 12, 2017 at 1:41 pm
Read section 4 of the 25th amendment .
"Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of
the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the
President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written
declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the
Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."
I'm wondering if we are seeing the beginnings of a President Pence. Although Donald Trump may
give one some consternation to his being a qualified person to sit in the Oval Office, Mike Pence
may bring down the house with his religious leanings inside of his political philosophy. Either
way we Americans are in for a most interesting time of it in our country's brief history. We should
all probably prepare ourselves for the worst, and hope that the best will happen.
Zachary wasn't Mike Pense your governor, or do I have you in the wrong state?
Realist , January 12, 2017 at 4:27 pm
Fascinating and disturbing at the same time. That section was surely MEANT to apply to the
president's health and physical capacity to do the job. However, a declaration by the VP (supported
only by a simple majority of the cabinet or the congress) "that the President is unable to discharge
the powers and duties of his office" can be based in an insurrection, a coup, or simply the erosion
of political capital. Gerald Ford could have argued that Richard Nixon no longer had the support
to govern (which is what Nixon himself conceded as the basis for his resignation). It basically
gives the VP and whatever insurgents he can muster the ability to quickly overthrow the sitting
president without the inconvenience of an impeachment and trial in the Senate. It could be the
Maidan without the messy blood all over the pavement. How wonderful.
Very resourceful of you in looking that up, Joe. I would never have imagined the seeds for
a coup existed right in the constitution.
Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 9:16 am
I have a saying: For the people in law-enforcement, law is a fringe benefit. Those who control
law always use it as a tool. Have you ever heard of a coup which was not based on some law, even
if it was the one written post-festum by the coup plotters? In other words, a coup is never difficult
to justify by the winners.
I have no doubt that the coup that Joe describes is possible. But the issue for the coup plotters
has always been: what happens with all the Trump voters after such a coup, the millions of them?
Will they sit and just watch the destruction of their social contract?
To some extent such US coup dilemma is not dissimilar to the nuclear war dilemma: easy to start,
difficult to finish.
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 10:53 am
KIza, nice to hear from you it's been awhile.
Read this link. Trump got 26.8% of the total citizenry to vote for him. In all honesty I haven't
seen any polls on how the American populace shakes out on these controversies such as this most
recent fake news story, but I would imagine that a clever beat down campaign would be able to
soften the blowback .but then again I agree with you to some extent, that by pushing Trump out
of office this would have to have some kind of consequence that would not be pretty.
Joe, in general I am trying to highlight that it is one thing to bamboozle sheeple with a talk
of democracy (which does not exist) and another to openly crush even this reassuring lie. I just
cannot see the end game of a US coup and Trump is but a minor obstacle if they want to start it.
Therefore, they really want to make a Trump a lame and controllable President, not to take
over. Maintaining a reassuring lie of democracy is a much more sophisticated and efficient control
mechanism than direct control. I may we wrong but I do believe that Trump is just being house
trained/broken by TPTB in front of our eyes.
You write: I have not seen any polls how American populace shakes out on these controversies.
My reading of the online beat is that the Trump voters are not swayed, whilst the Clinton voters
use the "controversy" as confirmation that they were right all along about Trump. But then Clinton
voters would receive a confirmation even from an oily rag thrown in their direction. In other
words, a mountain shook and a mouse was born – almost no change at all on either side.
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 12:56 pm
KIza your comparing Trump's attackers to how the MH17 story was spun is right on.
Trump is an easy target since his nature is certainly different than that of the usual norm
of our politico class who are cookie cutter politicians on the whole. I'm disappointed by how
people such as Michael Moore are going out of their way attacking Trump, while they completely
ignore how corrupt and dishonest the Clinton's are.
I wouldn't go so far as to predict that Trump supporters won't rebel against his impeachment,
but there again I believe the Trump supporters would be out numbered due to an over aggressive
media who could sway the majority into believing we must get Trump out of office. Any other method
other than impeachment is to horrible to even contemplate, so let's hope that all of our concerns
turn to ashes, and that for the good or bad of it that Trump finishes out his first term in good
health.
Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 8:19 pm
Yes, Joe, those 26.8% of citizenry who voted for Trump are built into 75-76% of citizenry who
do not believe in the MSM any more and in the John Brennan's two kitchen sinks, that is, his two
top secret but leakable kompromat dossiers on Trump – the first one apparently from an MI6 agent
and the second one promoted by the BBC (source unknown yet).
But this is not about Clintons any more, this is about the owners of the Clintons training/braking
Trump to be like the Clintons. If they cannot have a Clinton as a President, they want to have
a President as Clinton. If kompromat does not work, maybe a billet will, their patience is limited.
Always enjoyable to exchange thoughts with you Joe.
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 11:14 am
Realist, considering how our country's founders were a bunch of slave owners declaring how
all men are created equally well need I say more?
Words are just words, that is until lawyers interpret these legal words into a reality, which
doesn't always fit into our own personal definition of a certain word usage. You and I deal with
this stuff all the time. Whether it be a traffic ticket, or an ordinance summons, we read one
thing, and the judge administers another thing. Prisons are filled with people who swear with,
'yeah but' explanations which give these prisoners no relief what so ever so I do think these
crafty legislators could pull a fast one, and install Mike Pence into the White House. Let's you
and I hope that I'm the one out in left field with my 25th amendment comment, and that we won't
end up with a Christian whack job as our president.
Reply
Zachary Smith , January 12, 2017 at 5:23 pm
Yeah, Pence was elected Governor of Indiana. But despite this state being one of the most conservative
in the nation, Pence was too "nutty" and "far-right" for Mississippi North, and would have surely
been defeated. Now the man is one heartbeat/one impeachment conviction from becoming President
of the United States.
Quote: "From his denial of climate change to his belief in creationism, Pence is the most
hard-right radical to ever appear on a national ticket. Just this week a federal court had to
block his atrocious bill barring Syrian refugees from his state because his reasoning that Syrians
scare him is discriminatory."
Quote: "it is a literal truth, Mr. Speaker, to say that I am in Congress today because of
Rush Limbaugh, and not because of some tangential impact on my career or his effect on the national
debate; but because in fact after my first run for Congress in 1988, it was the new national voice
emerging in 1989 across the heartland of Indiana of one Rush Hudson Limbaugh, III, that captured
my imagination.""
It's a fact we are very, very close to having a Rush 'druggie' Limpaugh clone as President.
In my opinion, Pence is Trump's worst mistake up till now. If they can't have Hillary, for the
neocons and neo-liberals and the Christian End-Timers there remains Worse-Than-Hillary Mike Pence.
Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist
Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. With Republican control
of the House and Senate and the prospect of dramatically and decisively tilting the balance
of the Supreme Court to the far right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at
bringing the fire and brimstone of the second coming to Washington.
"The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. That's the only legitimate
government," contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the radical religious right, including
"The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." "So when they speak
of business, they're speaking not of something separate from God, but they're speaking of what,
in Mike Pence's circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system
is God-ordained."
Zachary I looked forward to your reply, since you always have references to your level headed
comments .so thanks for getting back to me.
In my world I don't even like bringing up the word God, or religion, since I believe a government
should be governed in a truly secular way. Who I pray to, and who I pay taxes to, are two completely
different things. My devotion to God is a very private matter, and I don't need some politician
interpreting God's greatness to me in anyway. So with that if Mike Pense wants to preach the gospel
to me, then he should resign from public office and become a full fledged preacher and even then
I will not go to his mean spirited church. Amen.
Realist , January 13, 2017 at 3:13 pm
What a troubling coincidence that Hulu is releasing its production of "the Handmaid's Tale"
by Margaret Atwood this April, which tells the story of the United States government being taken
over by extreme Christian fundamentalists and the consequences, especially to women and religious
dissenters. Read the book by Atwood and you'll see where Isis/Daesh got many of their ideas on
punishment and control of the masses. The Spanish Inquisition was six hundred years ago, but its
urges lie just beneath the veneer of our civilised modern world. Human nature hasn't changed,
only technology has. I thought this country was in danger of playing out the novel during Dubya's
administration, as 9-11 was exactly the kind of pretext for such a takeover in the book's plot
narrative and the Islamic world was portrayed as the great global adversary just as many Americans
believe in the real world. Trump has never struck me as a religious man, certainly not a zealot,
but Pence, with a little help from the Deep State, he could bring this disturbing novel to life.
Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:16 pm
I'm wondering if we are seeing the beginnings of a President Pence.
A very plausible and ominous possibility.
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 12:53 am
Seriously Bill even taking into consideration how some like Glenn Beck along with Rick Santelli
ridiculed an early President Obama back in 2009, I can't recall a more hostile media such as the
likes of how this current day corporate media is going after Trump. True, that Donald Trump by
just being Donald Trump can be an outrageous person with his words and actions, but still I just
can't get over the 24/7 media coverage, and how most of it isn't good coverage at that. This leaves
me to wonder if we all are not being setup for something big.
With Trump's winning streak putting away a whole herd of Republican primary candidates, and
how he sent 'low energy Jeb' packing, and then to go on and beat Hillary by his winning the Electoral
vote, he has had a great run. Now Donald Trump is battling not only the CIA/FBI/NSA, but he is
also bumping up against the congressional establishment. You know that McCain and Graham hate
him, but you can only bet that there is yet much more to come.
I'm sorry, but I don't sense there is much good to come with all of this. Thanks for the reply.
Kiza , January 13, 2017 at 9:57 am
Joe, I wonder if people missed the crazy similarity of the media campaign on the Trump "report"
and the one on MH17 ?
It appears that the TPTB have decided that if they generate enough media screaming, the lack
of proof does not matter any more.
Thus, I have become a strong proponent of the theory that whatever TPTB use outside, it is
only a practice for what they will use (more productively) inside. Drones anyone?
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:06 pm
KIza read my comment above, it pertains to what you brought up here.
All this turmoil and a dysfunctional Congress insures that nothing will change. The 1% loves
the status quo and will do anything to preserve it. Simply a smokescreen to keep US from dealing
with the corporate stranglehold on our government.
An Empire in decline.
Reply
Mike Flores , January 12, 2017 at 1:24 pm
While others laugh and make jokes, those of us who study Intel know that what just happened
with the leaked report was that the CIA has involved itself in U.S. politics, which it is forbidden
to do. How did the alliance between the Democratic Party and CIA begin? President Truman had allowed
200 Nazi Intel agents to come into the U.S. – including the men who created the blueprint for
the holocaust. Fearing Joe McCarthy would discover this, the CIA faked an Intel report and has
spent decades ever since lying about Joe. They actually confessed that his 2 lists were correct,
so they had to fool him with a fake dossier right before the Army hearings to shake his confidence.
Just search CIA AND THE POND and you will find on their website STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE in the
last third of the article a full confession of framing Joe. This Facebook photo album THE REAL
JOSEPH McCARTHY is packed with forbidden information and can be viewed with this link by anyone
whether they are on FB or not. The alliance between the Democratic Party and CIA began by hiding
the people responsible for the holocaust. ( We should keep in mind Truman was KKK and forbade
the bombing of the train tracks to the death camps. The reason soldiers were not prepared for
the camps was that none had been told about them. Truman did not want our troops wasting time
on them). Interesting to note that absolutely no one has ever done an article or book on the impact
of the beliefs of the KKK on the 5 Democrats who were Presidents and Klansmen in the 20th century.
That would reveal the true nature of the Democratic Party.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153995222685986.1073741929.695490985&type=1&l=6dd1544b9d
Reply
Bill , January 12, 2017 at 1:37 pm
You don't mention President Obama, but it certainly seems likely that he's involved with this.
Who told Brennan and Clapper to go on TV to hype the intelligence reports and bad-mouth the next
President?
And were the leakers within the agencies acting on their own, or were they given orders from
above? There's a conspiracy going on and it's not my imagination.
Does the behavior rise to the level of treason or espionage?
Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:58 pm
Obama is a deadhead it is Brennan who instructs him. But who instructs Brennan?
Reply
Michael Morrissey , January 12, 2017 at 1:46 pm
As I have just learned from another reader's comment on another article, David Spring has augmented
his earlier article to an 85-page expose. Seems it was both a leak and a hack, but in neither
case by "the Russians."
I hope Ray McGovern and especially Wm Binney (and some Trump guy) read this and tell us what
they think!
I read it last night. Very much worth the couple of hours it took.
Reply
Realist , January 14, 2017 at 3:42 am
Well, that's THE comprehensive treatment in a nutshell. Everything documented chronologically.
Nothing important left out. Everything explained clearly and concisely. As organised as possible
and argued like a philosopher rather than a lawyer. The man has exceptional writing skills as
well as incredible computer knowledge. I'd like to see him question Clapper on the witness stand.
I hope that President Trump puts the Justice Department on this case to do a thorough investigation,
including potential indictments of spooks that perjured themselves and/or engaged in partisan
activities during the election and its ugly aftermath.
Reply
Oleg , January 12, 2017 at 2:47 pm
I am really surprised to no end. Why are you in the US so keen on destroying any credibility
of your government? I do not really know what would happen in the US but in Russia there would
be riots. Any leader in Russia can govern only until he/she is trusted. Think Tsar Nicholas II,
Gorbachev I hope it will not get to this and some sanity will prevail in your country.
Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 10:22 pm
Why are you in the US so keen on destroying any credibility of your government?
What credibility? Oleg, if you check the graphic at the top of the right sidebar on this page
you will see a reference to "I. F. Stone" who was one of this nation's great journalists of the
20th Century. He is noted for a dictum that says, "All governments lie." All governments certainly
include the U.S. government. You can get plenty of examples of lies with a little effort.
Bill Bodden , January 12, 2017 at 11:12 pm
Lies out of government agencies and elected politicians are not the only problem. Hypocrisy
is another and has been part of American governance since the writing of the Declaration of Independence
by slave owners who said that all men are created equal with the right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Now hypocrisy is rampant with politicians decrying alleged Russian intervention
is U.S. elections with the claim that it is wrong for any nation to interfere in the elections
of another nation. There is no nation on the planet that interferes in the governments of other
nations than the United States.
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Oleg , January 13, 2017 at 3:02 am
Well, I certainly agree, but a government can still be largely trusted even if they resort
to some petty lies. As we all do too sometimes. But this this is not a petty thing, this is an
intentional attack on the whole institution of elections and democracy when they try to impeach
the elected President because some part of the establishment, not the people, dislike him. This
has a potential to really get very dangerous, and having any kind of uprisings (as was also mentioned
by other commenters above) in a country like the US is extremely dangerous for the whole world.
Reply
Abe , January 12, 2017 at 3:01 pm
Anyone in Washington seeking a golden shower from a couple of Russian prostitutes just has
to hop on one of those all-expenses-paid AIPAC junkets to Israel.
It's truly amazing how streams of urine help elevate one's anxiety about Iran's nuclear energy
program.
American journalist and activist Chris Hedges noted a key purpose of the declassified report
"Russia's Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election" from the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (ODNI):
"to justify the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization beyond Germany, a violation
of the promise Ronald Reagan made to the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the
Berlin Wall. Expanding NATO in Eastern Europe opened up an arms market for the war industry. It
made those businesses billions of dollars. New NATO members must buy Western arms that can be
integrated into the NATO arsenal. These sales, which are bleeding the strained budgets of countries
such as Poland, are predicated on potential hostilities with Russia. If Russia is not a threat,
the arms sales plummet. War is a racket."
Israeli arms sales to Europe more than doubled from $724 million in 2014 to $1.63 billion in
2015. http://jfjfp.com/?p=83806
Israel is the leading arms exporter in the world per capita (2014), and ranks 11th among the
top 20 exporters of military equipment and systems (2011-15).
75-80% of Israeli military exports are generated by just three companies - the state-owned
Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries and the publicly traded Elbit Systems.
The largest categories of Israeli military exports are upgrading aircraft and aerospace systems
(14%), radar and electronic systems (12%), drones (11%), and intelligence and information systems
(10%).
In 2015, the Russian government described Israel's delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine as
"counterproductive". There is a close arms trade and production co-operation between Israel and
Poland. Israeli companies have invested in building arms manufacturing facilities in Poland.
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jfl , January 12, 2017 at 3:26 pm
However, in this case, it is not even known whether the Russians have any dirt on Trump.
If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something
in them which will hang him.
- said to have been said by redhat richelieu
what is known is that the nsa/cia/fbi have all the dirt on everyone, and that they use it
on the leaders of the eu, for instance.
if the only thing that comes out of this filthy little exercise is the death of the nsa/cia/fbi
– superpower america's superstazi – by executive fiat it will have been worth trump's election.
it's either that or another dead president. with pence playing lbj.
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F. G. Sanford , January 12, 2017 at 3:41 pm
Funny how these "leaks" work, isn't it? If there really were an "insider" able to provide insight
on the deepest, darkest secrets that had been gathered by Russian intelligence, why would any
responsible intelligence agency completely destroy that asset only to expose a mundane fetish
like "golden showers"? But don't anybody dare leak "The Torture Report". Don't even consider leaking
information about war crimes, election fraud, financial crimes, murder, state corruption or state
sponsorship of terrorism.
Just my opinion, but here's how it really went. The "hack" scenario is a diversion from the
"leak" scenario. The "deep state" didn't really want Hillary. While she may superficially represent
their interests, the Clinton machine is too knowledgeable, too experienced and too selfish and
self-centered to predictably execute their programs. The Clintons have plenty of dirt on them.
But they had enough dirt on her to compromise her electability. They don't want Trump either,
but they can manufacture or dig up enough dirt to compromise his Presidency. Their first choice
was Jeb Bush. Their second choice is Mike Pence.
The DNC stuff was leaked by an insider, and the Podesta stuff was hacked by the NSA. The only
plausible alternative points to hacking attempts by the neo-Nazi Ukrainian hacking outfit "RuH8",
not the Russians.
A bunch of recent articles seek to analyze Barack Obama's legacy, personality and motivations.
That's all superfluous. The "real deal" has been well documented. His grandparents were CIA His
mother was CIA His first job after law school was with Banking international Corporation, a CIA
"front company". He was groomed and thoroughly vetted.
Nobody wants to hear the truth or look at real evidence. The circumstantial – though well documented
– evidence connecting Ted Cruz's father to the anti-Castro Cubans, the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald
is actually much more plausible and substantial than the evidence for "Russian hacking" of the
election, yet the general public has no problem dismissing that as a "conspiracy theory".
Between the two, Trump was perceived – mistakenly – as the lesser threat to the "deep state".
Just a guess, but we may be about to see all hell break loose.
It's about time some journalists and researchers started naming names and making lists. The
"New McCarthyism" uses lists to good advantage. It creates the perception of a vast subversive
network dedicated to destroying our "democracy". Until some names are named and fingers pointed,
the "deep state" and its intelligence community enforcement arm will continue to control the "democracy"
we don't really have. Blackmail is just one of their methods, and it's far from the worst.
My favorite quotes from the "Company Intelligence Report":
"However, he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow " (Is this a pun?)
"PUTIN angry with senior officials who "overpromised" on TRUMP and further heads likely to
roll as result. Foreign minister LAVROV may be next" (What Putin is going to make him change the
sheets in Trump's hotel room?)
" TRUMP has paid bribes and engaged in sexual activities there but key witnesses silenced and
evidence hard to obtain" (Were the "key" witnesses the same ones that claim Putin shot down MH-17?)
I think they dug up the script writers from "The Man from Uncle" and put them back to work.
This sounds like a Quinn Martin Production straight out of a Hollywood "B Movie".
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Abe , January 12, 2017 at 10:24 pm
First Draft coalition "partner" BuzzFeed is leading the charge to make fake news, hybrid war
propaganda, and hoaxes "more shareable and more social"
FG, I'm not gay, but I always scroll down to find your comment. You are always looking into
the big picture, not the big illusion.
backwardsevolution , January 13, 2017 at 1:44 am
Gregory – I agree. His comments are always very good.
Reply
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:07 pm
Me three.
F. G. Sanford , January 13, 2017 at 6:41 pm
Thanks to all – sometimes I wonder if it's worth putting in my two cents. We're probably a
statistically insignificant group of readers on the world's stage, but I like to think at least
it's worth a try.
Reply
We must organize beyond cyberspace as this is a coup in action. CIA is greatest meddler of
all nations, coups and assassinations well documented. DC is the Aegean stable that must be cleaned,
a truly Herculean task and We the People have to get organized because this planet is imperiled.
Agree with Dan that whole sordid mess is beyond a swamp, a stinking pit and pitchforks are necessary!
Reply
LJ , January 12, 2017 at 4:36 pm
It's more doublethink logic from the Intelligence heads. It would require a tremendous leap
of faith for anyone with a brain to think that Russia/Putin/Lavrov would use this info, if it
existed at all, in public manner. To do so wouldn't help them achieve a goal and it would only
hurt Russia .. The tape would never become public even if it existed. That means this rumor is
clearly slander and was aimed at some political end. . Where is the smoking gun?, sorry. By the
way , Putin is friends with Bertoloscini , Sarkozy and other notorious womanizers and is known
to like women himself. This is not something he would do. He is not a mobster. This is puerile
and it is coming from the Democrats although the word is that George Bush initially hired the
guy, the former MI5 spy, who wrote the dossier/smear piece on Trump in the first place. . Hoover
would have kept it in shop and tried to leverage Trump himself.
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Bernie , January 12, 2017 at 5:09 pm
There's an article at ABC News today about US tanks rolling into Poland. This reminds me of
Nazis rolling into Austria in 1938 and then Poland on Sept 1, 1941 to start WWII. "American soldiers
rolled into Poland on Thursday, fulfilling a dream some Poles have had since the fall of communism
in 1989 to have U.S. troops on their soil as a deterrent against Russia. Some people waved and
held up American flags as U.S. troops in tanks and other vehicles crossed into southwestern Poland
from Germany and headed toward the town of Zagan, where they will be based. "
Abe , January 12, 2017 at 6:32 pm
Like Poland, Ukraine is eager to express its devotion to the Reich, er, its "Euro-Atlantic
aspirations".
If only for the sake of NATO "cooperation" and "capacity building", Poland and Ukraine have
much to forgive and forget:
Of course, reports of Russian "euphoria" remain "unconfirmed".
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Mark West , January 12, 2017 at 5:36 pm
Absurd. Who is this "they" everyone is talking about? How many are/is this 'they'? 5, 10 20?
Who is in control of 'they'? Who's in charge? The political elite? Do they have a club and do
they meet for bridge every Tuesday? Do they have a secret handshake? Are they all really Mason's?
This conspiracy holds no credibility because 'they' is just an 'idea'. That is all. Until someone
can give names of those who are responsible and running this political elite then its all storybook
conjecture. We should be more concerned with the obvious psychological dementia affecting the
president elect. He was a total looney tune in that press conference.
What you are saying with this list then, Wendi, it is not the political elites, intelligence
agencies or career politicians whoTrump continuously rails against as the cause for the end of
the American Empire. It is the financial hierarchies that Trump so desperately wants to be a part
of. Putin is obviously at the top of this list and Trump sees him as a way to become a player
in this club. That makes sense to me.
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Dr. Ibrahim Soudy , January 12, 2017 at 6:14 pm
"THEY" are the people who control the MONEY. They are referred to as the BANKERS. Those are
a mafia that runs the political circus BEHIND the scene. The parties and elections are a diversion
to keep the idiots busy arguing with each other like the crazy fans of sports teams. The BANKERS
always make sure that the "idiots" are choosing between alternatives that ultimately BOW to the
BANKERS. Read for example the following:
– "All the President's Bankers" by Naomi Prins.
– "Memoirs" by David Rockefeller.
– "The Crisis of Democracy" a publication of the Tri-Lateral Commission on their website.
-Goldman, Wall Street and Financial Terrorism | The Inline image 2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-whetten/goldman-wall-street-and-f_b.. .
Jun 19, 2010 · The most disturbing aspect of the recent Goldman Sachs lawsuit isn't just the legal
violations involved Goldman, Wall Street and Financial Terrorism.
-Goldman Sachs Are Financial Terrorists | FacebookInline image 1 http://www.facebook.com/Stop.Goldman
Goldman Sachs Are Financial Terrorists. 95,662 likes · 6,188 talking about this. Get the Honest
truth on the economy, this page sponsors no organization
Those will give you a good start ..Good Luck.
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Sam F , January 13, 2017 at 7:29 am
Perhaps you do not mean the ridicule you suggest. The effects of economic aristocracy and political
conspiracy are of course not "storybook conjecture" but the combined deductions of experienced
observers. That would become conjecture only if specific persons were accused, which is seldom
done without evidence.
The demand for detailed evidence of an old-fashioned conspiracy to effect societal trends is
not valid. It becomes propaganda when used to attack the means by which we all deduce that events
are driven by cabals, or loose organizations of interested parties. While we are occasionally
surprised by the detailed evidence that emerges long after events, even that is incomplete and
not very relevant.
The means of ridicule shows its invalidity. There is no reason to speculate upon clubs, meetings,
or handshakes, as there is no need for such specific or antiquated organization. No modern organization
works that way, no one has suggested that, and no one here has reasoned from such nonsense, but
rather from well documented effects of cabals. So I hope that you merely overstated a wish for
more evidence.
Robert, Could it not be true that the real losers in the neocon push to extend the American
dominion might actually be the intelligence services? They have become so politicized in domestic
politics since the Iraq War build up (a la Rice, Chaney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Powell) that
they figure they can shape American public opinion to support any war, no matter how "unthreatening"
the enemy (say Russia) might actually be. Originally they were basically "fact collectors" (objective)
– at first from around the world, but since 9/11's Patriot Act, at home also. Then, they became
"interpreters and analyzers of motives" which takes a bit of a weed-gee board (subjective!) on
the part of the "experienced eye". When whatever these very effective (and appreciated) fact collectors
opine suddenly becomes gospel in their "estimates" (interpretation), we have lost the ability
to even influence the fate of our nation. Is this the country I grew up in? Or, has it been this
way since we were led so effectively to support World War I? Take care, HM
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Thurgle , January 12, 2017 at 6:44 pm
The NYT skirts around the issue of who paid the huge sums for the research that produced the
story of Trump's alleged sexcapades in Moscow. They never say the funders are unknown, but instead
use devices like the passive tense to avoid saying. But it would be very interesting to know who
signed the checks. Apparently, there was a Republican funder during the primaries who stopped
payment when Trump prevailed, whereupon Fusion found a Clinton backer to write their checks. It
would be very interesting to know who these funders were and why the MSM seems so keen to avoid
saying.
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BlackPete , January 12, 2017 at 7:46 pm
When it comes to cavorting with prostitutes JFK was the undisputed champion. Given the high
regard JFK is held in in some circles maybe Trump's alleged misbehaviour is a positive sign. Also,
now that Trump's behaviour has been made public isn't the Russian threat to expose him now worthless
and their alleged hold/influence gone?
Mark West , January 12, 2017 at 8:01 pm
Its not about the hookers. That's useless drivel. It's about the potential of illegal financial
dealings with Russia prior to the election. Just show the damn tax returns. What the hell is he
afraid of? What could possibly go wrong?
Are you keen on asking Clintons to reveal their financial dealings with Saudis, the sponsors
of 9/11?
How about the Kagans' clan being currently "supported" financially by Qatari?
And this is much more interesting than tax return: "The NYT skirts around the issue of who paid
the huge sums for the research that produced the story of Trump's alleged sexcapades in Moscow.
They never say the funders are unknown, but instead use devices like the passive tense to avoid
saying. But it would be very interesting to know who signed the checks. Apparently, there was
a Republican funder during the primaries who stopped payment when Trump prevailed, whereupon Fusion
found a Clinton backer to write their checks. It would be very interesting to know who these funders
were and why the MSM seems so keen to avoid saying."
It is controlling, deceptive, organized, bloody and does not give a "rat ass" about the needs
of any other human being on earth who does not belong to it!
It neither tolerates opposing views from anybody who does not belong to its members nor allows
the outsiders to organize . It is determined to be the lens through which everybody under its
control see the rest of the world; any conclusion drawn by the besieged population, based on what
it is forced to see, must conform to the "DEEP STATE" norms; otherwise, you are in deep trouble.
The POTUS or the Congress must toe lines dictated by the members of this organization, (the Deep
State). We are observing that no effort is being spared to see to it that President-Elect toes
the "DEEP STATE" line; it is deep and scary indeed!
Reply
John , January 12, 2017 at 8:40 pm
Russia is the half naked female in the magic show The real slight of hand is the relationship
with the American oligarch and china .wow !!! . talking about messing with the bottom line some
of you big brain folks will get this in 4 ..3 2 ..lol
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There is little doubt that the obvious blackmail will never be covered in that light by main
stream media. To those of us who are historians or are natural skeptics or have actually lived
through those times, this is all fairly obvious. They are trying to put Donald Trump in a corner
so he can be controlled.
I suspect that is why Trump retained Steve Bannon for. Not just a house racist but someone
who can get down and dirty on those that dish up dirt on Trump. We'll have to see if it works.
Headlines: "Donald unleashes TwitterBomb on CIA". But he'll have to go on the internet since the
CIA owns the press in the USA.
He has two choices. Listen to the CIA and do their bidding which is the requirement to start
WWIII with Russia or resist and be smeared in the press. It's an uphill battle too. Unlike Silvio
Berlusconi or Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump does not actually own the press. That will make it
especially hard to do.
This thing is shaping up to be a geopolitical oil war. Rex and the Russians vs the Saudi/CIA
Team USA.
All I can say is fine America. Don't give a damn about privacy. Don't give a damn about anything.
But one of these days this massive spying ring gathering every shred of any and all traces of
your life and filing them away forever cannot be good. It will most certainly not end well.
When AI has us all pinned up against a wall threatening to out all of us if we do not do exactly
what it wants then what will we do?
We need some privacy laws. Also we need to throw the main stream media out with the trash.
It is pure evil. Back in the day, the press wouldn't run the stories about MLKs extramarital affairs
it recorded secretly. The press demanded to know the source of the B.S. and the FBI did not want
to tip their hand so the Mexican standoff led to the suicide letter which said "if you accept
the Nobel Prize, we will shame you and ruin you and you should consider preserving you legacy
by killing yourself instead. At least the MSM had some ethical standards and smelled a rat and
refused to run the stories. Imagine that. If MLK was alive today we and we still had segregation,
people and the media would fight to keep it! MLK would be a portrayed in the press as a philandering
bad guy. A sexual predator. The Civil Rights movement would end in a quagmire of gossip surrounding
its leader.
The Republicans have certainly had their fun with it too making Monica Lewinsky describe to
a court the distinctive features of the president's privates. I bet they were rolling in the aisles
when that happened. Now it's their turn. Will they defend Trump or will they hope that perhaps
Mike Pence would make a better leader.
All this tawdry B.S. really gets old fast. I could care less what people do in private as long
as nobody gets hurt.
One person abroad when asked what they thought about Bill Clinton's circumstances replied they
were confused since after all we were not electing the Pope. Amen. I feel the same way about Trump.
It's all B.S.
The problem is America can't remember what happened yesterday. We are collectively like terminal
Alzheimer patients. Two seconds after we see something, we forget it and are completely susceptible
to B.S.in two seconds after we forgot what just happened which ignores the facts which occurred
a mere two seconds earlier but we are none the wiser since we can't remember what happened more
than two seconds ago. That means there are a lot of opportunities each day to fool us.
What ever happened to the story about James Comey influencing the election? We just forgot
it. What ever happened to all of the other historically "likely suspects" thought to have been
likely suspects in vote rigging schemes. They are all absent and not presented as possible influencers
of the election by our CIA owned press. Instead we are presented with a fake narrative filled
with salacious gossip and naughty bits designed to turn public opinion into a weapon for further
increases in militarization and military spending while preserving foreign relationships which
benefit wealthy investors.
We need to wake up and start taking some strong medicine to ward off the Alzheimer disease
that is affecting us in order to put the daily snow job presented by the MSM and the CIA into
perspective. That perspective would include what just happened two seconds ago.
Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen since the medication would have to include administering
it to the MSM too.
The ability of the MSM to erase our collective memory and present us with a new fake narrative
on any given day should ring alarm bells that we are obviously vulnerable to being fooled.
We are being fooled. Every day. Time to start taking the meds.
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Jurgen , January 12, 2017 at 10:01 pm
This is no "deep state" this is rather in-plain-sight US Government at work.
Trivial task:
1) Create a dense smoke screen by broadcasting on every single TV channel non-stop anti-Russian
and anti-Trump*** hysteria (they know it can't go wrong – they know Trump would try to reply to
every single fake thus making their task easier and the picture even more colorful)
2) Behind that smoke screen ship few thousands of US troops and tanks over to Poland and to those
parasitic micro quasi-states in Baltic and by doing that de-facto lay foundation for 4-5 new military
bases,
which (yet another NATO expansion) otherwise would not be approved and likely axed by Trump. But
now it went through s-m-o-u-ht-ly, like a butter. Highest class of the old Shell Game. Where CIA,
FBI and other spook shops are used as shills and the population of the US are total losers (everyone's
taxes will be used to pay for that yet another NATO expansion).
3) Behind the same smoke screen Obamacare has just been demolished late last night, congrats 20
million of poor folks!
*** Just wait till grainy videos surface showing some naked figures – one of them would be
vaguely resembling Trump.
That'd be no hard task for talented movie makers from either PSYOP or/and PAG (just remember their
masterpieces featuring Jessica Lynch and other ones featuring fat "Osama bin Laden"-looking dude).
Note: Authorization to create and finance state Propaganda apparatus, S.2943, was quietly passed
late Friday night Dec.23 behind the smoke screen of the same anti-Russian and anti-Trump hysteria,
thus what we are seeing now is perfectly lawful – propaganda machine at full throttle, who said
bureaucracy is slow(?)
As a non-citicen one has to wonder about the mind boggling machination the US politic is capable
of.
After WW2 the European countries looked upon the USA as the beacon of democratic values.
How bitter for the young generation to find, bit by bit, that behind the American facade lurked
a system
of smoke and mirrors. As ruthless as the very system they replaced in Europe. Slowly sugarcoating
their deep aims of domination. Under words like freedom,liberty and equality there is the underlying
unbelievable lust for money and with it power. From a human point of view, and the thinking person,
the politics and aims of the United States of America is an abomination for all the worlds people.
Oleg , January 13, 2017 at 3:27 am
I certainly agree with you, but also I am really saddened that this pattern is far from being
unique and repeats itself all over and over again. The power corrupts, and it is true for states
as well as for people. But the US are indeed a sad champion in hypocrisy. Their predecessors were
not as skilled in hiding their true intentions behind the screen of freedom and all other very
attractive values. This makes it especially hard to accept.
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Brad Owen , January 13, 2017 at 5:08 am
You've fingered the wrong culprits, or rather indicted fellow victims. It's the same bloody,
titled ruling class and their managerial elites in business and banking from old-line European/British
families who've been playing their Imperial games and still are. THEY created the late 19th century
Synachist Movement for Empire (SME) that gave birth to Fascism and its' feverish twin NAZIism,really
just movements to update the workings of the old-fashioned European Empires. It's also the Cecil
Rhodes/Milner RoundTable Group that dove-tailed with SME machinations to update old Empires, campaigning
strenuously, through their managerial elites on Wall Street, to recapture their "rogue colony"
USA and bring it into the British version of Empire. Right at the moment of FDR's death (may have
been assassination), the tables were turned on us, with Churchill leading stupid Truman around
by the nose speaking of iron curtains and Red Scares and Cold Wars. FDR's intelligence community
was taken over by Anglophile RoundTable allies in the post-war 40s. Having helped win the battles,
we lost the War to the fascist/NAZI SME and RoundTable groups who never received so much as a
scratch from all the bombs and bullets. Have you seen the show Hunting Hitler? WWII never ended,
the methods of fighting just changed.
Brad Owen , January 13, 2017 at 5:44 am
P.S. Not only did WWII never end, just a change in fighting methods, BUT the SME/RoundTable
Groups managed to get the two most powerful allies turned against each other: USSR and USA, so
that we, together, couldn't focus on the REAL enemy; SME/RoundTable group of elites (which would
have happened under FDR in post-war. He would have been President until January 1949 if he hadn't
died/been killed, Stalin told FDRs son that "that Churchill gang killed him" been trying to do
the same to Stalin) and THIS is why Trumps' Russophilia is such a grave and real threat to our
Establishment.
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:13 pm
Brad you hit the nail on the head with your comments here .bravo!
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John P , January 14, 2017 at 9:55 pm
Where on earth did you get this fable. Roosevelt had polio and needed a wheelchair, he was
a heavy smoker, had high blood pressure, angina followed by congestive heart failure all finalized
by a stoke. He had been weakening over a long period. This is all before the days of polonium
the USSR uses to kill its foes today.
Russia wasn't following the agreements drawn up in Yalta and fair free elections were not provided
in Poland and many Poles who fought for the allies in the war felt betrayed. The Soviets went
their own way, so were we to tell the Poles, tough.
Allied convoys, mainly British, at great cost in ships and men, supplied the Russians with war
supplies. They faced U-boats and heavily armed German battle-cruisers in freezing arctic waters.
After the war Germany got assistance in rebuilding, but the British were held to paying off debts
for US build liberty ships used to replace ships lost on the Atlantic convoys. I had an uncle
who's ship was sunk and very luckily, after much time in a life boat, was picked up. Many Americans
sat back and watched until Pearl Harbour. The British had warned the Americans some time before,
that they had lost contact with one of the Japanese fleets they were following, and you can guess
the consequences.
Britain saw what was coming when Germany attacked Poland and declared war on Germany. We didn't
have much. My father was almost killed assisting surgeon in a Liverpool hospital and luckily had
to leave to go out in an ambulance. When he came back the OR was gone. Bombed out. Luckily on
another occasion, the day staff had been told to stay on duty with the night staff and the nursing
residence was flattened. We had rationing until 1950, and had to grow food in our small back garden,
sprouts, peas, cabbage. We had 6 chickens and a rooster, a source of much needed nutrition from
eggs. I remember my mother weeping terribly after telling the police she had lost her ration books.
As a young lad I went on a search and eventually found them in the folds of a chair. You may never
have had to live through something like that.
And if you think America is any better than others, read "What is America?" by Ronald Wright.
Learn about the Trail of Tears and traders knowingly giving natives blankets used by whites with
small-pox.
Brad Owen , January 15, 2017 at 6:47 am
You relate the manufactured cover story, thanks to the anglophile Intel community that took
over in post-war forties, and did their typical change of the narration, much like they do today
with the phony crap about Russian aggression. This kind of sh!t has been going on since the revolution,
as the wealthy and powerful Imperial Tories never left and never relented. I got this"fable" from
EIR and Tarpley.net. It makes more sense to me than the current fable we call history. Check it
out for yourself, it amounts to mountains of articles and essays. It took me years to piece it
all together and relay it adequately in brief paragraphs. Choose to believe there is no over-arching
Imperial ruling class inimical to the interests of commoners if you want. I refuse to be blind
to it anymore.
David F., N.A. , January 12, 2017 at 10:18 pm
What if the intelligence community wasn't choosing between HRC and Trump, but, in stead, between
HRC and Pence. So no matter who won, wouldn't this hedged election mean business as usual?
Sorry, HRC, but for this downward neoliberal/fascist spiral thingy to work, you lesser-of-2-evil
conservaDems are just going to have to learn to share with the equally-corrupt conservatives.
See ya in 4 (or maybe 8 (naw, 4)).
Hail to the de facto Chief. da dada da dada dada dada da.
Reply
Furtive , January 12, 2017 at 11:36 pm
You forgot to declare who is the drag queen in this matter?
Let's warn these evil psychopaths that a JFK OUTCOME IS OFF LIMITS.
That is the inference of your article.
By the way, Trump NEVER READ THE REPORT PRIVATELY. THERE WAS AN ORAL PRESENTATION, & CLAPPER
& Brennan took the CLASSIFIED documents back with them. Trump never read the 2 pg libel nor was
it discussed in the presentation.
Carl Rising-Moore , January 13, 2017 at 2:38 am
This is also reminiscent of Hoover and JFK. When JFK attended Hoover's office, he was handed
the President's file. JFK read some of the file while Hoover waited. When JFK stood up to leave,
Hoover told the President that the file remains with him. No wonder JFK and Bobby hated this dangerous
psychopath.
Reply
John P , January 12, 2017 at 11:43 pm
It's all slime, Americans let their political system fall into the trap of big money (lobbying
system and PACs) and neo-liberalism. I have no faith that Trump has the capabilities to be a good
president. His dialogue is simple, his temper easily aroused as are his feelings of hurt. He shows
little historical knowledge or political skills and speaks in a petty childish way. Who is going
to pay for the southern border wall ?! What is going to replace Obama's medical care programs,
more big business institutions ?! To me it looks like the Palestinians are on the Titanic run
by captain Trump and his son-in law, and only minutes to go. What real in depth policies has Trump
ever stated ?! Look out because Trump has a habit of passing on the bills be it cash, broken promises
or a road you never thought he would take.
And yes we need a calming down and discussion between the US, Russia and China, but I don't see
any hope in the line of folks Trump has chosen or Clinton. To me, Trump is like passenger on an
aircraft in which the pilot has expired and he is relying on others to tell him what to do because
he has no idea or understanding.
I think this and a world where jobs have been taken by microprocessors and robots, is a very dangerous
place and we don't need a blind narcissist leading the way. Sadly Bernie Sanders got burnt on
the stake.
Reply
Carl Rising-Moore , January 13, 2017 at 2:28 am
At times like this I miss the wise words of the late Chalmers Johnson. Chalmers was not encouraged
by the possibility of America stepping back from her efforts to control the entire world. He felt
the deep state was too committed to America's Full Spectrum Dominance. Is this the sloppy end
to the legacy of the Sole Super Power? Or, is this just the middle of the play before curtain
call?
When Russia came to the aid of Syria, I believed that we were entering the Multipolar World Order.
Hopefully that is still possible but better sooner than later before we enter the No World Order
of endless chaos. Does the American deep state really want to play Russian Roulette with live
nucs?
Joe Tedesky , January 13, 2017 at 1:16 pm
I wish Chalmers Johnson were still with us, and able to comment on our current events good
of you to bring his name up.
Reply
John P , January 15, 2017 at 7:01 pm
I'm sorry Brad. With your EIR's reference, the first story I saw concerned Obama-care connected
to some Nazi policies. Next they claim global warming is fake. The US was the only western nation
without a national health program. People die because they haven't the money to pay for drugs
or health care. The health of a labourer is more important to them that a rich bloke sitting at
a desk. And excuse me but back in the late 60s I studied astronomy besides my major, another science,
and even then learned that both CO2 and methane each trap the sun's energy and cause temperatures
to rise. That was long before global warming came to peoples attention. Sorry, your story is pure
fiction.
Also, Trump hasn't a clue what he's talking about as far as global warming is concerned. Take
a look at the temperatures in the far north. They have been warmer than ever while we down here
are having huge cycles of heat and cold and are experiencing the fury that those changes can induce.
Dieter Heymann , January 16, 2017 at 2:23 pm
As a scientist you ought to know that CO2 and methane do not trap the sun's energy but absorb
upward IR radiation from Earth part of which they radiate back towards Earth's surface part out
into space. The blanket I use on my bed at night does not trap the heat generated by me either.
If it did it might catch fire?
John P , January 16, 2017 at 4:13 pm
Dieter I was just trying to make it simple, not write an article for Nature. The point being
so many people don't believe that we are altering the earths climate through burning fossil fuels.
We take down our forests, and plants are a big reason we are here as they take in carbon dioxide,
utilize the suns energy through photosynthesis and create organic compounds thus setting the stage
for further developments. There is so much irrationality out there brought on by job losses through
technology, and this creates huge divisions within society and that can lead to awful consequences
as history has shown.
I not sure some would understand the true science behind it. The subject was a reliance on a web
site that promoted climate change denial and a mentioned link between Obamacare and Nazism. Is
that a firm foundation of reliance ?
John P , January 16, 2017 at 4:33 pm
Just to clarify, I said astronomy wasn't my major, it was microbiology and medical sciences.
I had an interest in star gazing and following the planets.
Reply
Jamie , January 16, 2017 at 1:54 pm
Many liberals fail to understand that Hillary was the chosen candidate of the deep-state and
international finance capital. Unlike the unwashed masses - these forces don't care if politician
has a 'D' or 'R' next to their name. It is how well they will serve capital.
"... Indeed, a year later, Trump built a pro-war team that includes the most bloodthirsty, hawkish neocons. And then, he ordered a second airstrike against Syria, together with his neocolonial friends. ..."
"... Trump conducted the longest experiment on neoliberals' ultimate goal: abolishing the annoying presence of the state. And this was just a taste of what Trump is willing to do in order to satisfy all neoliberals' wet dreams. ..."
"... And perhaps the best proof for that is a statement by one of the most warmongering figures of the neocon/neoliberal cabal, hired by Trump . As John Bolton cynically and openly admitted recently, " It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. " ..."
"... Donald Trump is the personification of an authoritarian system that increasingly unveils its true nature. The US empire makes the Venezuelan economy 'scream hard', as it did in Chile in 1973. The country then turned into the first laboratory of neoliberalism with the help of the Chicago Boys and a brutal dictatorship. So, as the big fraud is clear now, neoliberalism is losing ground and ideological influence over countries and societies, after decades of complete dominance. ..."
Government shutdown, Venezuela: Donald Trump evolves into the best propagator of neoliberal fascism that tends to become a
normFebruary
07, 2019by system failure
Even before the 2016 US presidential election, this blog supported that Donald Trump is
apure sample of neoliberal barbarism . Many almost laughed at this perception because Trump was being already promoted,
more or less, as the 'terminator' of the neoliberal establishment. And many people, especially in the US, tired from the economic
disasters, the growing inequality and the endless wars, were anxious to believe that this was indeed his special mission.
Right after the elections, we supported that the
US establishment
gave a brilliant performance by putting its reserve, Donald Trump, in power, against the only candidate that the same
establishment identified as a real threat: Bernie Sanders.
In 2017 , Trump bombed Syria for the first time, resembling the lies that led us to the Iraq war disaster. Despite the fact that
the US Tomahawk missile attack had zero value in operational level (the United States allegedly warned Russia and Syria, while the
targeted airport was operating normally just hours after the attack), Trump sent a clear message to the US deep state that he is
prepared to meet all its demands - and especially the escalation of the confrontation with Russia.
Indeed, a year later, Trump built a pro-war team that includes the most bloodthirsty, hawkish neocons. And then, he ordered
a second airstrike against Syria, together with his neocolonial friends.
In the middle of all this 'orgy' of pro-establishment moves, Trump offered a controversial withdrawal of US forces from Syria
and Afghanistan to save whatever was possible from his 'anti-interventionist' profile. And it was indeed a highly controversial action
with very little value, considering all these US military bases that are still fully operational in the broader Middle East and beyond.
Not to mention the various ways through which the US intervenes in the area (training proxies, equip them with heavy weapons, supporting
the Saudis and contribute to war crimes in Yemen, etc.)
And then , after this very short break, Trump returned to 'business as usual' to satisfy the neoliberal establishment with a 'glorious'
record. He achieved a 35-day government shutdown, which is the
"longest shutdown in US history"
.
Trump conducted the longest experiment on neoliberals' ultimate goal: abolishing the annoying presence of the state. And this
was just a taste of what Trump is willing to do in order to satisfy all neoliberals' wet dreams.
And now, we have the Venezuela issue. Since Hugo Chavez nationalized PDVSA, the central oil and natural gas company, the US empire
launched a fierce economic war against the country. Yet, while all previous US administrations were trying to replace legitimate
governments with their puppets as much silently as possible through slow-motion coup operations, Trump has no problem to do it in
plain sight.
And perhaps the best proof for that is a statement by one of the most warmongering figures of the neocon/neoliberal cabal,
hired by Trump . As John Bolton cynically and openly
admitted recently, " It will make
a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities
in Venezuela. "
Therefore, one should be very naive of course to believe that the Western imperialist gang seriously cares about the Venezuelan
people and especially the poor. Here are three basic reasons behind the open US intervention in Venezuela:
The imperialists want to grab the rich oil fields for the US big oil cartel, as well as the
great
untapped natural resources , particularly gold (mostly for the Canadian companies).
Venezuela must not become an example for other countries in the region on social-programs policy, which is mainly funded
by the oil production. The imperialists know that they must interrupt the path of Venezuela to real Socialism by force if
necessary. Neoliberalism must prevail by all means for the benefit of the big banks and corporations.
Venezuela must not turn to cooperation with rival powers like China and Russia. Such a prospect may give the country
the ability to minimize the effects of the economic war. The country may find an alternative to escape the Western sanctions in
order to fund its social programs for the benefit of the people. And, of course, the West will never accept the exploitation of
the Venezuelan resources by the Sino-Russian bloc.
So, when Trump declared the unelected Juan Guaido as the 'legitimate president' of Venezuela, all the main neoliberal powers of
the West rushed to follow the decision.
This is something we have never seen before. The 'liberal democracies' of the West - only by name - immediately, uncritically
and without hesitation jumped on the same boat with Trump towards this outrageously undemocratic action. They recognized Washington's
puppet as the legitimate president of a third country. A man that was never elected by the Venezuelan people and has very low popularity
in the country. Even worse, the EU parliament
approved this action
, killing any last remnants of democracy in the Union.
Yet, it seems that the US is finding increasingly difficult to force many countries to align with its agenda. Even some European
countries took some distance from the attempted constitutional coup, with Italy even
trying to
veto EU's decision to recognize Guaido.
Donald Trump is the personification of an authoritarian system that increasingly unveils its true nature. The US empire makes
the Venezuelan economy 'scream hard', as it did in Chile in 1973. The country then turned into the first laboratory of neoliberalism
with the help of the Chicago Boys and a brutal dictatorship. So, as the big fraud is clear now, neoliberalism is losing ground and
ideological influence over countries and societies, after decades of complete dominance.
This unprecedented action by the Western neoliberal powers to recognize Guaido is a serious sign that neoliberalism returns
to its roots and slips towards fascism. It appears now that this is the only way to maintain some level of power.
"... It's almost like there's a neo-liberal playbook, isn't there? No underpants gnomes , they! (1) Defund or sabotage, (2) Claim crisis, (3) Call for privatization (4) Profit! [ka-ching]. Congress underfunds the VA, then overloads it with Section 8 patients, a crisis occurs, and Obama's first response is send patients to the private system . ..."
"... Assuming that wait time is a function of resources, you can easily see how the playbook would work: (1) Reduce resources, (2) whinge about wait time, and (3) drain patients from the VA system, for profit! (Note that while Democrats are ostensibly jumping on board the #MedicareForAll train, they are, in the main, silent -- Warren and Sanders being the only notable exceptions -- about the destruction of an existing ..."
"... "This is nothing short of a steady march toward the privatization [1] of the VA," Sanders said. "It's going to happen piece by piece by piece until over a period of time there's not much in the VA to provide the quality care that our veterans deserve." ..."
"... Now, just because privatizing the Veterans Administration is a project of the political class as a whole doesn't mean that the Trump Administration hasn't brought its own special mix of corruption and buffoonery to the table. Indeed it has! Who, we might ask, were the actual factions in the Republican administration pushing for VA Mission? Three of Trump's squillionaire golfing buddies at Mar-a-Lago[2], as it all-too-believably turns out. From Pro Publica, " The Shadow Rulers of the VA ": ..."
"... The wretched excess of Trump's policy-by-golfing buddies aside, I don't see why privatiizing the Veterans Administration shouldn't become a major campaign issue, especially given Sanders' presence on the relevant committee. We send our children off to die in wars for regime change where the only winners are military contractors. ..."
With the release of new proposed eligibility rules under the VA Mission Act, we see that privatization at the Veterans Administration
(VA) continues to unfold, as outlined in the
neoliberal
playbook , to which we have alluded before:
The stories intertwine because they look like they're part of the
neoliberal privatization playbook , here described in a post about America's universities:
It's almost like there's a neo-liberal playbook, isn't there? No
underpants gnomes , they! (1) Defund or sabotage, (2) Claim crisis,
(3) Call for privatization (4) Profit! [ka-ching]. Congress underfunds the VA, then overloads it with Section 8 patients, a
crisis occurs, and
Obama's first
response is send patients to the private system .
Congress imposes huge unheard-of, pension requirements on the Post Office, such that it operates at a loss, and it's gradually
cannibalized by private entities, whether for services or property. And charters are justified by a similar process.
(I've helpfully numbered the steps, and added 'sabotage' alongside defunding, although defunding is neoliberalism's main play,
based on the ideology of austerity.)
The political class has been trying to privatize the VA across several administrations -- "
Veterans groups are angry after President
Obama told them Monday that he is still considering a proposal to have treatment for service-connected injuries charged to veterans'
private insurance plan" -- although it is true that the Trump administration has brought its own special brand of crassness to the
project, as we shall see. As
we might expect , the project has nothing to do with
the wishes of veterans :
Nearly two-thirds of veterans oppose "privatizing VA hospitals and services," according to a poll released Tuesday by the Vet
Voice Foundation. And some 80 percent of the veterans surveyed believe veterans "deserve their health care to be fully paid for,
not vouchers which may not cover all the costs."
A plurality of veterans, or 42 percent of those surveyed, agreed with the statement that the VA "needs more doctors," according
to the poll, indicating they believe the VA's problems are at least partly due to a personnel shortage [Step (1)].
Although Vet Voice is a progressive organization, the poll of 800 veterans was jointly conducted by a Democratic polling firm
and a Republican one.
A new study by Dartmouth College that compares Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals with other hospitals in the same regions
found VA facilities often outperform others when it comes to mortality rates and patient safety.
Researchers compared performance data at VA hospitals against non-VA facilities in 121 regions. In 14 out of 15 measures, the
VA performed "significantly better" than other hospitals, according to results from the study.
"We found a surprisingly high, to me, number of cases where the VA was the best hospital in the region," said Dr. William Weeks,
who led the study. "Pretty rarely was it the worst hospital." "One has to wonder whether outsourcing care is the right choice
if we care about veterans' outcomes," Weeks said. "The VA is, for the most part, doing at least as well as the private sector
in a local setting, and pretty often are the best performers in that setting."
"One has to wonder" indeed! Be that it may, the new VA eligibility rules accelerate privatization.
USA Today :
Nearly four times as many veterans could be eligible for private health care paid for by the Department of Veterans Affairs
under sweeping rules the agency proposed Wednesday.
VA officials estimated the plan could increase the number of veterans eligible for private care to as many as 2.1 million
– up from roughly 560,000 .
Assuming that wait time is a function of resources, you can easily see how the playbook would work: (1) Reduce resources,
(2) whinge about wait time, and (3) drain patients from the VA system, for profit! (Note that while Democrats are ostensibly jumping
on board the #MedicareForAll train, they are, in the main, silent -- Warren and Sanders being the only notable exceptions -- about
the destruction of an existing , and highly functional, single payer system. So how do we get to this point? A previous
iteration of the neoliberal playbook, of course!
The program, which began in 2014, was supposed to give veterans a way around long waits in the VA. But veterans using the Choice
Program still had to wait longer than allowed by law. And according to ProPublica and PolitiFact's analysis of VA data, the two
companies hired to run the program [TriWest and Health Net] took almost $2 billion in fees, or about 24 percent of the companies'
total program expenses .
According to the agency's inspector general, the VA was paying the contractors at least $295 every time it authorized private
care for a veteran. The fee was so high because the VA hurriedly launched the Choice Program as a short-term response to a crisis.
Four years later, the fee never subsided -- it went up to as much as $318 per referral .. In many cases, the contractors' $295-plus
processing fee for every referral was bigger than the doctor's bill for services rendered, the analysis of agency data showed.
Ka-ching! So, step (3) -- profit! -- worked out very well for TriWest and Health Net, piling up $2 billion in loot. (
Step (2) was a scandal of "35 veterans who had died while waiting for care in the Phoenix VHA system," step (1) being the usual
denial of resources/sabotage). The VA Mission Act was the legislative response to Veterans Choice debacle. Naturally, it moved the
privatization ball down the field.
The American Prospect
:
Only two of the 42 members on the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee opposed Mission last year , when it
came up for a vote.
In other words, privatizing the Veterans Administration has strong bipartisan support. But:
One of those lawmakers, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Democrat, reiterated his opposition to Mission in December.
"This is nothing short of a steady march toward the privatization [1] of the VA," Sanders said. "It's going
to happen piece by piece by piece until over a period of time there's not much in the VA to provide the quality care that our
veterans deserve."
Now, just because privatizing the Veterans Administration is a project of the political class as a whole doesn't mean that
the Trump Administration hasn't brought its own special mix of corruption and buffoonery to the table. Indeed it has! Who, we might
ask, were the actual factions in the Republican administration pushing for VA Mission? Three of Trump's squillionaire golfing buddies
at Mar-a-Lago[2], as it all-too-believably turns out. From Pro Publica, "
The Shadow Rulers of the VA ":
[Bruce Moskowitz, is a Palm Beach doctor who helps wealthy people obtain high-service "concierge" medical care] is one-third
of an informal council that is exerting sweeping influence on the VA from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's private club in
Palm Beach, Florida. The troika is led by Ike Perlmutter, the reclusive chairman of Marvel Entertainment, who is a longtime acquaintance
of President Trump's. The third member is a lawyer named Marc Sherman. None of them has ever served in the U.S. military or government
.
The arrangement is without parallel in modern presidential history.
Everything is like CalPERS.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 provides a mechanism for agencies to consult panels of outside advisers, but such
committees are subject to cost controls, public disclosure and government oversight. Other presidents have relied on unofficial
"kitchen cabinets," but never before have outside advisers been so specifically assigned to one agency. During the transition,
Trump handed out advisory roles to several rich associates, but they've all since faded away. The Mar-a-Lago Crowd, however, has
deepened its involvement in the VA.
In September 2017, the Mar-a-Lago Crowd weighed in on the side of expanding the use of the private sector. "We think that some
of the VA hospitals are delivering some specialty healthcare when they shouldn't and when referrals to private facilities or other
VA centers would be a better option," Perlmutter wrote in an email to Shulkin and other officials. "Our solution is to make use
of academic medical centers and medical trade groups, both of whom have offered to send review teams to the VA hospitals to help
this effort."
In other words, they proposed inviting private health care executives to tell the VA which services they should outsource to
private providers like themselves. It was precisely the kind of fox-in-the-henhouse scenario that the VA's defenders had warned
against for years.
While it is true that the ideological ground for privatization was laid by
the
Koch Brothers , among others, the actual vector of tranmission, as it were, seems to have been the Mar-a-Lago crowd. There has
been pushback against them, in the form of
a Congressional
request for a GAO investigation , and
a lawsuit by veterans
, but as we have seen, the neoliberal play continues to run.
* * *
The wretched excess of Trump's policy-by-golfing buddies aside, I don't see why privatiizing the Veterans Administration shouldn't
become a major campaign issue, especially given Sanders' presence on the relevant committee. We send our children off to die in wars
for regime change where the only winners are military contractors.
Then, when our children come home, we're going to send them into a health care system that's been as crapified as everybody else's
(and that's before we get to PTSD, homelessness, and suicide). Surely a pitch along those lines would play in the heartland? If Sanders
doesn't pick up the ball and run with it, Gabbard should.
[SANDERS:] No one disagrees that veterans should be able to seek private care in cases where the VA cannot provide the specialized
care they require, or when wait times for appointments are too long or when veterans might have to travel long distances for that
care. The way to reduce wait times is to make sure that the VA is able to fill the more than 30,000 vacancies it currently
has. This bill provides $5 billion for the Choice program. It provides nothing to fill the vacancies at the VA. That is wrong
. My fear is that this bill will open the door to the draining, year after year, of much needed resources from the VA.
In other words, the way to solve the problem is not to take Step 1: Give the VA the resources that it needs.
[2] I continue to believe that golf play, or knowledge of golf play, should be a disqualification for high office.
Re: "The possibility that MAGA was, in fact, a sly misdirection to co-opt the fervour of re-ignited passions in a disenfranchised
segment of the America people - to re-capture the kind of patriotic commitment and ardor that drove the war effort in two world
wars - into a renewed Imperial adventure was obviated, in my view, by Trump's loud and overt criticism of past Imperial adventures
such as the Iraq war and Obama's inaction regarding ISIS (the accusation that Obama "created" ISIS was a bombshell, in my opinion).
Trump engaged in a bare, pointed, often crass and bordering on contemptuous criticism of his predecessors' foreign policy.
The irreverent tone was unprecedented in recent campaign history and was so plain and completely at odds with Hilary's stated
positions that it essentially committed him (in my eyes anyway) to following through, or to make all efforts to follow through.
If not, he would set one of the worst examples of a duplicitous politician, perhaps ever. The same applies to other bold campaign
positions, such as the border wall, for example.
But when viewed in the context of a deep state "policy change," such a clear and utter denunciation and discrediting of the
former policy would be necessary to shift the National mindset and would not necessarily preclude Trump from engaging in further
Imperial adventures, as long as they were different from the discredited policy."
Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who came up through intelligence positions
in Iraq and Afghanistan, says that the George W. Bush administration's Iraq war was a tremendous blunder that helped to create
the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS.
"It was a huge error," Flynn said about the Iraq war in a detailed interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel published Sunday.
"As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him," Flynn went on to say. "The same is true for Moammar
Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History
will not be and should not be kind with that decision."
When told by Der Spiegel reporters Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark that the Islamic State would not "be where it is now without
the fall of Baghdad," Flynn, without reservations, said: "Yes, absolutely."
Flynn, who served in the U.S. Army for more than 30 years, also said that the American military response following 9/11 was
not well thought-out at all and based on significant misunderstandings.
Interesting, very interesting. As noted in the Flynn sentencing memo last night there were some curiously framed explanations
of events surrounding his FBI inquisition.
Now Judge Emmet Sullivan wants expanded information, and wishes to see the actual notes (FD-302) that were mentioned by Flynn;
and Judge Sullivan is directing the special counsel to provide all documents created by the FBI surrounding the Flynn interview:
from the comments:
Curt says:
December 12, 2018 at 9:56 pm
This could be big news! Judge Emmet Sullivan was the same judge that had prosecutors investigated for criminal actions they took
in the Sen. Ted Stevens FALSE prosecution. Some on Mueller's team, including Weinstein, were held in contempt. One prosecutor
committed suicide. Others threatened with disbarment and some were suspended. "A federal judge dismissed the ethics conviction
of former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska on Tuesday after taking the extraordinary step of naming a special prosecutor to investigate
whether the government lawyers who ran the Stevens case (2008) should themselves be prosecuted for criminal wrongdoing. Mueller
was also involved in that horrible attempt by prosecutors to frame Sen. Ted Stevens. Judge Sullivan has absolutely no use for
this group of prosecutors. He smells a rat here and is asking for all investigative materials, including 302s. This judge will
not hesitate to take action against these crooked prosecutors if he finds evidence of ANY wrong doing.
On April 7, 2009, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia unleashed his fury
before a packed courtroom. For 14 minutes, he scolded. He chastised. He fumed. "In nearly 25 years on the bench," he said, "I've
never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case.
. . .
For months Judge Sullivan had warned U.S. prosecutors about their repeated failure to turn over evidence. Then, after the jury
convicted Stevens, the Justice Department discovered previously unrevealed evidence. Meanwhile, a prosecution witness and an agent
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) came forward alleging prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, newly appointed U.S. Attorney
General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he had had enough and recommended that the seven-count conviction against the former
Alaska senator be dismissed.
On April 7, Judge Sullivan did just that. But he was far from done.
In an extraordinarily rare move, he ordered an inquiry into the prosecutors' handling of the case. Judge Sullivan insisted
that the misconduct allegations were "too serious and too numerous" to be left to an internal Justice Department investigation.
He appointed Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler to investigate whether members of the trial
team should be prosecuted for criminal contempt.
12-13-18 Following the allegations, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan yesterday ordered that both the Mueller investigation and
the Flynn team turn over all documents [the "302s"] relating to the fateful interview, including all contemporaneous notes, before
3pm Friday.
The EU didn't impose austerity on the UK, its own government did. We don't have the euro, in
case you haven't noticed. The US is our top overseas buyer. If we want more of that, we'll
have to take something like TTIP or worse.
The EU was a voice for African, Caribbean and Pacific producers against US transnationals,
and offered favorable terms. We've weakened that voice.
Brexit makes us more dependent on the IMF, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup
and Morgan Stanley. They're not EU bodies.
Britain opposed EU democratisation for forty years by upholding national governments' veto
powers over proposals supported by elected MEPs.
You voted against everything you claim to uphold. Because it was a vote against
everything.
None of that's even the issue. Do you have an insight to offer beyond antipathy to the
EU?
"... Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity. ..."
"... I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people ..."
It should be pointed out that the Integrity Initiative recently claimed on Twitter that some of the documents leaked in batch
#4 were not theirs and had been misrepresented as part of the organisation.
It doesn't really matter, though: all that we know, anti-socialist shills writing propaganda on behalf of II (Nimmo, Cohen,
Reid-Ross) have confirmed their own roles, and the Twitter account was proven to have pushed out slanderous material on Jeremy
Corbyn.
Note that "misrepresented" could have referred to the inclusion of the Corbyn slide show document which was presented at but
created by the II.
This organisation and all of those part of it should be treated as enemies of the people, as they have attacked, disingenuously
and using smears,
-Yellow Vests
– Jill Stein
-Jeremy Corbyn
-George Galloway
-Seuams Milne
-German Left Party
-French Left Party
-French Communist Party
-Greek Communist Party
-Podemos
-Norwegian Red Party
-Norwegian Socialist Left Party
-Swedish Left Party
-Swedish Greens
-International Anti-NATO Groups
-Greyzone Project
-Julian Assange
-MintPressNews
Via
-Infiltrating Corbyn and Sanders campaigns
-Inserting propaganda anonymously into local media including the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, The Times, the Guardian, and more
-Using social media to orchestrate hate and dismissal campaigns against those mentioned above
-Hosting events for collaboration between members
-Building online "clusters" to deploy and shape discourse in the media and elsewhere
By repeating or openly collaborating with:
-Ben Nimmo
-Oz Katergi
-Anne Applebaum
-Peter Pomerantsev
-Bellingcat
-Atlantic Council
-Carole Cadwalladr
-David Aaronovitch
-Center For A Stateless Society
-PropOrNot
-Alexander Reid-Ross
-Nick Cohen
-Michael Weiss
-Jamie Fly
-Jamie Kirchick
Directed by:
-Tory Government
-NATO
-Facebook
-German Multinationals
Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward
many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity.
I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least
for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people.
Voters around the world revolt against leaders who won't improve their lives.
Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in the Washington Post
that savaged Donald Trump's character and leadership. Romney's attack and Trump's response
Wednesday morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a longstanding personal feud between the
two men. It's even possible that Romney is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican
nomination in 2020. We'll see.
But for now, Romney's piece is fascinating on its own terms. It's well-worth reading. It's a
window into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.
Romney's main complaint in the piece is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and divisive
leader. That's true, of course. But beneath the personal slights, Romney has a policy critique
of Trump. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull American troops out of the Syrian
civil war. Romney doesn't explain how staying in Syria would benefit America. He doesn't appear
to consider that a relevant question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We
know that. Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.
Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is strongly on board with
those, too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump for cutting the corporate rate a year
ago.
That's not surprising. Romney spent the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain
Capital. Bain Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: Take over an
existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt,
extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned pensions.
Romney became fantastically rich doing this.
Meanwhile, a remarkable number of the companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the
private equity model. Our ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It's how they run the
country.
Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist
foreign policy as the "mainstream Republican" view. And he's right about that. For generations,
Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while
simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those
goals enthusiastically.
There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In
countries around the world -- France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others
-- voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a
decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you're watching is entire populations revolting
against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.
Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode
a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political
revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are
destroying America? Those are open questions.
But they're less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest
of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How
do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.
The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning
cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones,
or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They
haven't so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide
are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be
summed up in GDP is an idiot.
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It's happiness.
There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence.
Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your
children. They're what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.
But our leaders don't care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to
the people they rule. They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through.
They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can't solve our problems. They don't even
bother to understand our problems.
One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything
else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture,
meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.
Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party
who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words,
functionally libertarian. They don't care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the
markets function. Somehow, they don't see a connection between people's personal lives and the
health of our economy, or for that matter, the country's ability to pay its bills. As far as
they're concerned, these are two totally separate categories.
Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet
reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you'll hear them say, is that the
American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the
libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct.
The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They
refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.
Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined.
Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies
possible. You can't separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The
evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.
Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were
horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor
neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule.
Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.
What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn't even want to acknowledge the question. They were
benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready
explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of
badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives
called a "culture of poverty" that trapped people in generational decline.
There was truth in this. But it wasn't the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually
the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways,
rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.
This is striking because rural Americans wouldn't seem to have much in common with anyone
from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political
beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives,
mostly.
Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown
Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A
terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You'd
think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they're not. They
don't have to be interested. It's easier to import foreign labor to take the place of
native-born Americans who are slipping behind.
But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here's a big part
of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but
disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools
and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made
more than men.
Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after
study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.
Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don't. Over big populations, this causes a drop
in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably
follow -- more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the
next generation.
This isn't speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It's social science.
We know it's true. Rich people know it best of all. That's why they get married before they
have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in
America can afford.
And yet, and here's the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married
people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much
nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight
malaria in Congo. But working to raise men's wages in Dayton or Detroit? That's crazy.
This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our
mindless cultural leaders act like it's still 1961, and the biggest problem American families
face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or
Facebook executives.
For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it's more
virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own
kids.
Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our
first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is
one of America's biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.
We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule.
They're day traders. Substitute teachers. They're just passing through. They have no skin in
this game, and it shows.
What's remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn't question why Sandberg was
saying this. We didn't laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media
celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: "Lean
In." As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans
should say so.
They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all
commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can't possibly repay? Or
charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect
400 percent annual interest.
We're OK with that? We shouldn't be. Libertarians tell us that's how markets work --
consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it's also
disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans,
whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it
would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our
kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new
technology has made it odorless. But it's everywhere.
And that's not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana,
marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or
decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana
industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. "Oh, but it's better for you than
alcohol," they tell us.
Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who's
been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want
that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the
reason. Because they don't care about us.
When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don't even
try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities
based purely on how we look. There's nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes
close.
Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate
as someone who's living off inherited money and doesn't work at all. We tax capital at half of
what we tax labor. It's a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.
In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He
paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners,
the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But
for everyone else, it's infuriating.
Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on
the principles of the free market. Please. It's based on laws that the Congress passed, laws
that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for
those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a
big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids
don't hate you. They hate each other.
That happens in countries, too. It's happening in ours, probably by design. Divided
countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are
getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special
treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.
What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive
country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own
profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you're old.
A country that listens to young people who don't live in Brooklyn. A country where you can
make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as
important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting
outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And
above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place
special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that
actually cares about families, the building block of everything.
What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will
have to be Republicans. There's no option at this point.
But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a
religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You'd have to be a fool
to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do
not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys
families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.
Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They'll have to unlearn
decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They'll likely lose donors
in the process. They'll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market
fundamentalism a form of socialism.
That's a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn't work. It's what we should be working
desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we're going to get, and very soon unless a
group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that
protects normal people.
If you want to put America first, you've got to put its families first.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 2,
2019.
"... America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society." ..."
"... He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement." ..."
"... The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher wrote of Carlson's monologue, "A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president. ..."
"... The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke ..."
"... Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites -- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people." ..."
"... "What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?" ..."
"... Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald Trump, whose populist-lite presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it." ..."
"... Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative, thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment. ..."
"... Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax. ..."
"... "I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not." ..."
"... Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed." ..."
"... But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left. ..."
"... Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin. ..."
"... Hillbilly Elegy ..."
"... Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a function or raw nature." ..."
"All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God."
Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged
monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.
America's "ruling class," Carlson says, are the "mercenaries" behind the failures of the middle class -- including sinking
marriage rates -- and "the ugliest parts of our financial system." He went on: "Any economic system that weakens and destroys families
is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society."
He concluded with a demand for "a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don't accelerate
the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement."
The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, "Republicans
have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars." More
broadly, though, Carlson's position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative
politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand.
Moreover, in Carlson's words: "At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone too. The country will remain.
What kind of country will be it be then?"
The monologue and its sweeping anti-elitism drove a wedge between conservative writers. The American Conservative's Rod Dreher
wrote of Carlson's monologue,
"A man or woman who can talk like that with conviction could become president. Voting for a conservative candidate like that would
be the first affirmative vote I've ever cast for president." Other conservative commentators scoffed. Ben Shapiro wrote in
National Review that Carlson's monologue sounded far more like Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than, say, Ronald Reagan.
I spoke with Carlson by phone this week to discuss his monologue and its economic -- and cultural -- meaning. He agreed that his
monologue was reminiscent of Warren, referencing her 2003
bookThe Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Growing Broke . "There were parts of the book that I disagree
with, of course," he told me. "But there are parts of it that are really important and true. And nobody wanted to have that conversation."
Carlson wanted to be clear: He's just asking questions. "I'm not an economic adviser or a politician. I'm not a think tank
fellow. I'm just a talk show host," he said, telling me that all he wants is to ask "the basic questions you would ask about any
policy." But he wants to ask those questions about what he calls the "religious faith" of market capitalism, one he believes elites
-- "mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule" -- have put ahead of "normal people."
But whether or not he likes it, Carlson is an important voice in conservative politics. His show is among the
most-watched television programs in America. And his raising questions about market capitalism and the free market matters.
"What does [free market capitalism] get us?" he said in our call. "What kind of country do you want to live in? If you put
these policies into effect, what will you have in 10 years?"
Populism on the right is gaining, again
Carlson is hardly the first right-leaning figure to make a pitch for populism, even tangentially, in the third year of Donald
Trump, whose populist-lite
presidential candidacy and presidency Carlson told me he views as "the smoke alarm ... telling you the building is on fire, and unless
you figure out how to put the flames out, it will consume it."
Populism is a rhetorical approach that separates "the people" from elites. In the
words of Cas
Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, it divides the country into "two homogenous and antagonistic groups: the pure people
on the one end and the corrupt elite on the other." Populist rhetoric has a long history in American politics, serving as the focal
point of numerous presidential campaigns and powering William Jennings Bryan to the Democratic nomination for president in 1896.
Trump borrowed some of that approach for his 2016 campaign but in office has governed as a fairly orthodox economic conservative,
thus demonstrating the demand for populism on the right without really providing the supply and creating conditions for further ferment.
When right-leaning pundit Ann Coulter
spoke with Breitbart Radio about Trump's Tuesday evening Oval Office address to the nation regarding border wall funding, she
said she wanted to hear him say something like, "You know, you say a lot of wild things on the campaign trail. I'm speaking to big
rallies. But I want to talk to America about a serious problem that is affecting the least among us, the working-class blue-collar
workers":
Coulter urged Trump to bring up overdose deaths from heroin in order to speak to the "working class" and to blame the fact
that working-class wages have stalled, if not fallen, in the last 20 years on immigration. She encouraged Trump to declare, "This
is a national emergency for the people who don't have lobbyists in Washington."
Ocasio-Cortez wants a 70-80% income tax on the rich. I agree! Start with the Koch Bros. -- and also make it WEALTH tax.
These sentiments have even pitted popular Fox News hosts against each other.
Sean Hannity warned his audience that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's economic policies would mean that "the rich people
won't be buying boats that they like recreationally, they're not going to be taking expensive vacations anymore." But Carlson agreed
when I said his monologue was somewhat reminiscent of Ocasio-Cortez's
past comments on the economy , and how even a strong economy was still leaving working-class Americans behind.
"I'm just saying as a matter of fact," he told me, "a country where a shrinking percentage of the population is taking home
an ever-expanding proportion of the money is not a recipe for a stable society. It's not."
Carlson told me he wanted to be clear: He is not a populist. But he believes some version of populism is necessary to prevent
a full-scale political revolt or the onset of socialism. Using Theodore Roosevelt as an example of a president who recognized that
labor needs economic power, he told me, "Unless you want something really extreme to happen, you need to take this seriously and
figure out how to protect average people from these remarkably powerful forces that have been unleashed."
"I think populism is potentially really disruptive. What I'm saying is that populism is a symptom of something being wrong," he
told me. "Again, populism is a smoke alarm; do not ignore it."
But Carlson's brand of populism, and the populist sentiments sweeping the American right, aren't just focused on the current
state of income inequality in America. Carlson tackled a bigger idea: that market capitalism and the "elites" whom he argues are
its major drivers aren't working. The free market isn't working for families, or individuals, or kids. In his monologue, Carlson
railed against libertarian economics and even payday loans, saying, "If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation
of Americans, whether it's happening in the inner city or on Wall Street" -- sounding very much like Sanders or Warren on the left.
Carlson's argument that "market capitalism is not a religion" is of course old hat on the left, but it's also been bubbling on
the right for years now. When National Review writer Kevin Williamson
wrote
a 2016 op-ed about how rural whites "failed themselves," he faced a massive backlash in the Trumpier quarters of the right. And
these sentiments are becoming increasingly potent at a time when Americans can see both a booming stock market and perhaps their
own family members struggling to get by.
Capitalism/liberalism destroys the extended family by requiring people to move apart for work and destroying any sense
of unchosen obligations one might have towards one's kin.
At the Federalist, writer Kirk Jing
wrote of Carlson's
monologue, and a
response
to it by National Review columnist David French:
Our society is less French's America, the idea, and more Frantz Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth" (involving a very different
French). The lowest are stripped of even social dignity and deemed
unworthy of life . In Real America, wages are stagnant, life expectancy is crashing, people are fleeing the workforce, families
are crumbling, and trust in the institutions on top are at all-time lows. To French, holding any leaders of those institutions
responsible for their errors is "victimhood populism" ... The Right must do better if it seeks to govern a real America that exists
outside of its fantasies.
J.D. Vance, author of
Hillbilly Elegy
, wrote that the [neoliberal] economy's victories -- and praise for those wins from conservatives -- were largely meaningless
to white working-class Americans living in Ohio and Kentucky: "Yes, they live in a country with a higher GDP than a generation ago,
and they're undoubtedly able to buy cheaper consumer goods, but to paraphrase Reagan: Are they better off than they were 20 years
ago? Many would say, unequivocally, 'no.'"
Carlson's populism holds, in his view, bipartisan possibilities. In a follow-up email, I asked him why his monologue was aimed
at Republicans when many Democrats had long espoused the same criticisms of free market economics. "Fair question," he responded.
"I hope it's not just Republicans. But any response to the country's systemic problems will have to give priority to the concerns
of American citizens over the concerns of everyone else, just as you'd protect your own kids before the neighbor's kids."
Who is "they"?
And that's the point where Carlson and a host of others on the right who have begun to challenge the conservative movement's orthodoxy
on free markets -- people ranging from occasionally mendacious bomb-throwers like Coulter to writers like
Michael Brendan Dougherty -- separate
themselves from many of those making those exact same arguments on the left.
When Carlson talks about the "normal people" he wants to save from nefarious elites, he is talking, usually, about a specific
group of "normal people" -- white working-class Americans who are the "real" victims of capitalism, or marijuana legalization, or
immigration policies.
In this telling, white working-class Americans who once relied on a manufacturing economy that doesn't look the way it did in
1955 are the unwilling pawns of elites. It's not their fault that, in Carlson's view, marriage is inaccessible to them, or that marijuana
legalization means more teens are smoking weed (
this probably isn't true ). Someone,
or something, did this to them. In Carlson's view, it's the responsibility of politicians: Our economic situation, and the plight
of the white working class, is "the product of a series of conscious decisions that the Congress made."
The criticism of Carlson's monologue has largely focused on how he deviates from the free market capitalism that conservatives
believe is the solution to poverty, not the creator of poverty. To orthodox conservatives, poverty is the result of poor decision
making or a
lack of virtue that can't be solved by government programs or an anti-elite political platform -- and they say Carlson's argument
that elites are in some way responsible for dwindling marriage rates
doesn't make sense .
But in French's response to Carlson, he goes deeper, writing that to embrace Carlson's brand of populism is to support "victimhood
populism," one that makes white working-class Americans into the victims of an undefined "they:
Carlson is advancing a form of victim-politics populism that takes a series of tectonic cultural changes -- civil rights, women's
rights, a technological revolution as significant as the industrial revolution, the mass-scale loss of religious faith, the sexual
revolution, etc. -- and turns the negative or challenging aspects of those changes into an angry tale of what they are
doing to you .
And that was my biggest question about Carlson's monologue, and the flurry of responses to it, and support for it: When other
groups (say, black Americans) have pointed to systemic inequities within the economic system that have resulted in poverty and family
dysfunction, the response from many on the right has been, shall we say,
less than
enthusiastic .
Really, it comes down to when black people have problems, it's personal responsibility, but when white people have the same
problems, the system is messed up. Funny how that works!!
Yet white working-class poverty receives, from Carlson and others, far more sympathy. And conservatives are far more likely to
identify with a criticism of "elites" when they believe those elites are responsible for the
expansion of trans
rights or creeping secularism
than the wealthy and powerful people who are investing in
private prisons or an expansion
of the
militarization of police . Carlson's network, Fox News, and Carlson himself have frequently blasted leftist critics of market
capitalism and efforts to
fight
inequality .
I asked Carlson about this, as his show is frequently centered on the turmoils caused by "
demographic change
." He said that for decades, "conservatives just wrote [black economic struggles] off as a culture of poverty," a line he
includes in his monologue .
He added that regarding black poverty, "it's pretty easy when you've got 12 percent of the population going through something
to feel like, 'Well, there must be ... there's something wrong with that culture.' Which is actually a tricky thing to say because
it's in part true, but what you're missing, what I missed, what I think a lot of people missed, was that the economic system you're
living under affects your culture."
Carlson said that growing up in Washington, DC, and spending time in rural Maine, he didn't realize until recently that the same
poverty and decay he observed in the Washington of the 1980s was also taking place in rural (and majority-white) Maine. "I was thinking,
'Wait a second ... maybe when the jobs go away the culture changes,'" he told me, "And the reason I didn't think of it before was
because I was so blinded by this libertarian economic propaganda that I couldn't get past my own assumptions about economics." (For
the record, libertarians have
critiqued Carlson's
monologue as well.)
Carlson told me that beyond changing our tax code, he has no major policies in mind. "I'm not even making the case for an
economic system in particular," he told me. "All I'm saying is don't act like the way things are is somehow ordained by God or a
function or raw nature."
And clearly, our market economy isn't driven by God or nature, as the stock market soars and unemployment dips and yet even those
on the right are noticing lengthy periods of wage stagnation and dying little towns across the country. But what to do about those
dying little towns, and which dying towns we care about and which we don't, and, most importantly, whose fault it is that those towns
are dying in the first place -- those are all questions Carlson leaves to the viewer to answer.
"... Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military establishment. ..."
If Syria wins the award for Country of the Year 2018, I'd hate to see who gets the Wooden
Spoon for 2018. There must be quite a few serious contenders for that prize!
Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer
disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that
constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own
collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity
Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military
establishment.
He has announced his order to withdraw US troops from Syria.
His Defense Secretary James Mattis has resigned. There are rumors National Security
Adviser John Bolton may go too. (Please take
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with you!)
He announced a start to withdrawing from Afghanistan.
He now says he will veto a government funding bill unless he gets $5 billion for his
Wall, and as of 12:01 AM Washington time December 22 the federal government is officially
under partial shutdown.
All of this should be taken with a big grain of salt. While this week's assertiveness
perhaps provides further proof that Trump's impulses are right, it doesn't mean he can
implement them.
Senator Lindsey Graham is demanding
hearings on how to block the Syria pullout . Congress hardly ever quibbles with a
president's putting troops into a country, where the Legislative Branch has legitimate
Constitutional power. But if a president under his absolute command authority wants to pull
them out – even someplace where they're deployed illegally, as in Syria – well hold
on just a minute!
This will be a critical time for the Trump presidency. (And if God is really on his side, he
soon might get
another Supreme Court pick .) If he can get the machinery of the Executive Branch to
implement his decision to withdraw from Syria, and if he can pick a replacement to General
Mattis who actually agrees with Trump's views, we might start getting the America First policy
Trump ran on in 2016.
Mattis himself said in his resignation letter, "Because you have the right to have a
Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these [i.e., support for
so-called "allies"] and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my
position."
Right on, Mad Dog! In fact Trump should have had someone "better aligned" with him in that
capacity from the get-go. It is now imperative that he picks someone who agrees with his core
positions, starting with withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan, and reducing confrontation with
Russia.
Former Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel complains that "our government is not a one-man show." Well, the "government"
isn't, but the Executive Branch is. Article II,
Section 1 : "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of
America." Him. The President. Nobody else. Period.
Already the drumbeat to saddle Trump with another Swamp critter at the Pentagon is starting:
"Several possible replacements for Mattis this week trashed the president's decision to pull
out of Syria. Retired Gen. Jack Keane called the move a "strategic mistake" on Twitter.
Republican Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) signed a letter demanding
Trump reconsider the decision and warning that the withdrawal bolsters Iran and Russia." If
Trump even considers any of the above as Mattis's replacement, he'll be in worse shape than he
has been for the past two years.
On the other hand, if Trump does pick someone who agrees with him about Syria and
Afghanistan, never mind
getting along with Russia , can he get that person confirmed by the Senate? One possibility
would be to nominate someone like Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney specifically
to run the Pentagon bureaucracy and get control of costs, while explicitly deferring
operational decisions to the Commander in Chief in consultation with the Service Chiefs.
Right now on Syria Trump is facing pushback from virtually the whole Deep State
establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike, as well as the media from Fox News , to NPR ,
to MSNBC . Terror has again gripped the establishment that the Trump who was elected president
in 2016 might actually start implementing what he promised. It is imperative that he pick
someone for the Pentagon (and frankly, clear out the rest of his national security team) and
appoint people he can trust and whose views comport with his own. Just lopping off a few heads
won't suffice – he needs a full housecleaning.
In the meantime in Syria, watch for another "Assad poison gas attack against his own
people." The last time Trump said we'd be
leaving Syria "very soon " was on March 29 of this year. Barely a week later, on April 7,
came a supposed chemical incident in Douma, immediately hyped as a government attack on
civilians
but soon apparent as likely staged . Trump, though, dutifully took the bait, tweeting that
Assad was an "animal." Putin, Russia, and Iran were "responsible" for "many dead, including
women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack" – "Big price to pay." He then for the
second time launched cruise missiles against Syrian targets. A
confrontation loomed in the eastern Med that could to have led to war with Russia. Now, in
light of Trump's restated determination to get out,
is MI6 already ginning up their White Helmet assets for a repeat ?
Trump's claim that the US has completed its only mission, to defeat ISIS, is being compared
to George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner following defeat of Iraq's army and the
beginning of the occupation (and, as it turned out, the beginning of the real war). But if it
helps get us out, who cares if Trump wants to take credit? Whatever his
terrible, horrible, no good, very bad national security team told him, the US presence in
Syria was never about ISIS. We are there as Uncle Sam's Rent-an-Army for the Israelis and
Saudis to block Iranian influence and especially an overland route between Syria and Iran (the
so-called
"Shiite land bridge" to the Mediterranean ).
For US forces the war against ISIS was always a sideshow, mainly carried on by the Syrians
and Russians and proportioned about like the war against the Wehrmacht: about 20% "us," about
80% "them." The remaining pocket ISIS has
on the Syria-Iraq border has been deliberate ly left alone, to keep handy as a lever to
force Assad out in a settlement (which is not going to happen). Thus the claim an American
pullout will
lead to an ISIS "resurgence " is absurd. With US forces ceasing to play dog in the manger,
the Syrians, Russians, Iranians, and Iraqis will kill them. All of them.
If Trump is able to follow through with the pullout, will the Syrian war wind down? It needs
to be kept in mind that the whole conflict has been because we (the US, plus Israel, Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom, etc) are the aggressors. We sought to use
al-Qaeda and other jihadis to effect regime change via the tried and true method. It
failed.
Regarding Trump's critics' claim that he is turning over Syria to the Russians and Iranians,
Assad is nobody's puppet. He can be allied with a Shiite theocracy but not controlled by it;
Iran, likewise, can also have mutually beneficial ties with an ideologically dissimilar
country, like it does with Christian Armenia. The Russians will stay and expand their presence
but unlike our presence in many countries – which seemingly never ends, for example in
Germany, Japan, and Korea, not to mention Kosovo – they'll be there only as long and to
the extent the Syrians want them. (Compare our eternal occupations with the Soviets' politely
leaving Egypt when Anwar Sadat asked them, or leaving Somalia when Siad Barre wanted them out.
Instead of leaving, why didn't Moscow just do a " Diem " on them?) It
seems that American policymakers have gotten so far down the wormhole of their paranoid
fantasies about the rest of the world – and it can't be overemphasized, concerning areas
where the US has no actual national interests – that we no longer recognize classic
statecraft when practiced by other powers defending genuine national interests (which of course
are legitimate only to the extent we say so).
Anyway, if this week's developments are the result of someone putting something into
Donald's morning Egg
McMuffin , America and the world owe him (or her) a vote of thanks. Let's see more of
the wrecking ball we Deplorables voted for !
Trump thought that by bringing the swamp into his fold he might be able to defang it. He
bent the knee, played nice and kissed the ring but still they kept at him. I think Trump has
had enough of giving a mile for getting an inch. I like Trump when he presents himself as a
human wrecking ball to all the evil plans of the Washington establishment and if he continues
like this I honestly believe he will be reelected in 2020, and one day will be acknowleged as
a true chapion for every day Americans but if he shrinks back into his shadow and gives the
likes of Bolton and Pompeo free reign to **** all over the globe with their insane scheming
he will be a one term failure.
Don't get too excited about the possibility that there may be more kinds of viagra to try
out, Jattras. If Trump recently seems to be more like the candidate we voted for, the real
reason for his reversion back is because the midterm elections are over and Trump kept the
Senate.
Check with me before you start making a lot of crack-pot statements
America's
trade policy is in incoherent shambles. Decades of neoliberal "free trade" pacts -- which as
often as not simply gave corporations an end run around the state, or their very own rigged,
pseudo-legal system -- have created terrible social carnage around the world and a furious
political backlash. And President Trump's incoherent, haphazard response has done little to
change the system, let alone reform it in a sensible fashion.
Overhauling such a gargantuan, world-spanning system is a dizzying task. But Timothy Meyer
and Ganesh Sitaraman at the Great Democracy Initiative have a
new paper that presents a solid starting point for developing a fundamental reform of
American trade structure.
Meyer and Sitaraman identify three large problems with the status quo, and propose policy
solutions for each:
The complicated and unbalanced structure of the bureaucracy that oversees trade
policy
The enormous pro-rich bias that is built into trade deals
How the inequality resulting from trade routinely goes totally unaddressed
Let's take these in turn.
The extant trade bureaucracy -- as usual for the American state -- is highly fragmented and
bizarrely structured. There is the Department of Commerce, the United States Trade
Representative, the Export-Import Bank, and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, plus the
International Development Finance Corporation coming soon. Then there are a slew of other
agencies that have some bearing on trade-related security or economic development.
Meyer and Sitaraman logically suggest combining most of these functions into a single
Department of Economic Growth and Security. The point is not just to streamline the trade
oversight structure, but also to make it consider a broader range of objectives. Neoliberals
insist that trade is simply about making the self-regulating market more "efficient," but trade
very obviously bears on employment, domestic industry, and especially security.
For instance, for all its other disastrous side effects, Trump's haphazard tax on aluminum
has dramatically
revived the American aluminum industry . Ensuring a reasonable domestic supply of key
metals like that is so obviously a security concern -- for military and consumer uses
alike -- that it wouldn't have even occurred to New Deal policymakers to think otherwise. It
takes a lot of ideological indoctrination to think there's no problem when a small price
disadvantage causes a country to lose its entire supply chain of key industrial
commodities.
Then there is the problem of pro-rich bias. Put simply, the last few decades of trade deals
have been outrageously biased towards corporations and the rich. They have powerfully enabled
the growth of
parasitic tax havens , which allow companies to book profits in low-tax jurisdictions,
starving countries of rightful revenue (and often leading to companies piling up gargantuan
dragon hoards of cash they don't know what to do with).
Corporations, meanwhile, have gotten their own fake legal system in the form of
Investor-State Dispute Settlement trade deal stipulations. As I have written before ,
the point of these arbitration systems is to create a legal system ludicrously slanted in favor
of the corporation -- allowing them not just to win almost every time, but to sue over
nonsensical harms like "taking away imaginary future profits."
Meyer and Sitaraman suggest renegotiating the tax portions of trade deals to enforce a
"formulary" tax system -- in which profits are taxed where they are made, not where they are
booked. This would go a considerable distance towards cracking down on tax havens -- who knows,
perhaps Luxembourg might even develop some productive business.
Finally, there is the problem of distributive justice. Again contrary to neoliberal dogma,
trade very often creates winners and losers -- witness the wreckage of Detroit and the fat
salaries of the U.S. executive class. Meyer and Sitaraman suggest new mechanisms to consider
the side effects of trade deals (and ways to compensate the losers), to take action against
abusive foreign nations (for example, by dumping their products below cost, or violating
environmental or labor standards), and finally directly taxing the beneficiaries.
Something the authors don't discuss is the
problem of trade imbalances . When one country develops a surplus (that is, it exports more
than it imports), another country must of necessity be in a deficit. The deficit country in
turn must finance its imports, usually by borrowing. That can easily create a severe economic
crisis if the deficit country suddenly loses access to loans -- which then harms the exporting
country, though not as much. This has been a disastrous problem in the eurozone.
The U.S. does have extremely wide latitude to run a trade deficit, because it controls the
global reserve currency, meaning a strong
demand for dollar-denominated assets so other countries can settle their international
accounts. But this creates its own problems, as discussed above.
To be fair, this is not exactly an omission for a paper focused on domestic policy. Creating
a specifically international trade architecture would require an entire paper of its own, if
not a book or three. But it would be something future trade policymakers will have to
consider.
At any rate, it's quite likely that trade policy will be a major topic of discussion in 2020
-- if for no reason other than Trump's ridiculous shenanigans in the area. However, even that
demonstrates an important fact: The U.S. president has a great deal of unilateral authority
over trade. Democrats should be thinking hard about how they would change things.
This paper is a great place to start.
President Donald Trump is planning on using his executive powers to cut food stamps for more
than 700,000 Americans.
The United States Department of Agriculture is proposing that states should only be allowed
to waive a current food stamps requirement -- namely, that adults without dependents must work
or participate in a job-training program for at least 20 hours each week if they wish to
collect food stamps for more than three months in a three-year period -- on the condition that
those adults live in areas where unemployment is above 7 percent,
according to The Washington Post . Currently the USDA regulations permit states to waive
that requirement if an adult lives in an area where the unemployment rate is at least 20
percent greater than the national rate. In effect, this means that roughly 755,000 Americans
would potentially lose their waivers that permit them to receive food stamps.
The current unemployment rate is 3.7 percent.
The Trump administration's decision to impose the stricter food stamp requirements through
executive action constitutes an end-run around the legislative process. Although Trump is
expected to sign an $870 billion farm bill later this week -- and because food stamps goes
through the Agriculture Department, it contains food stamp provisions -- the measure does not
include House stipulations restricting the waiver program and imposing new requirements on
parents with children between the ages of six and 12. The Senate version ultimately removed
those provisions, meaning that the version being signed into law does not impose a conservative
policy on food stamps, which right-wing members of Congress were hoping for.
"Congress writes laws, and the administration is required to write rules based on the law,"
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., told The New York Times (Stabenow is the top Democrat on the
Senate's agriculture committee). "Administrative changes should not be driven by ideology. I do
not support unilateral and unjustified changes that would take food away from families."
Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from
Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His
work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
So at the moment when everybody assumed that Trump lost control of the foreign policy, he
does this. It's a real surprise. Kind of Christmas gift to his voters. And that's with neocon
Pompeo as his State Secretary and neocon Bolton as his national security advisor.
The War Party project of regime change in Tehran suffered a severe setback with the U.S.
pullout from Syria.
Notable quotes:
"... Forced to choose between Turkey, with 80 million people and the second-largest army in NATO, which sits astride the Dardanelles and Bosphorus entrance to the Black Sea, and the stateless Kurds with their Syrian Democratic Forces, or YPG, Trump chose Recep Tayyip Erdogan. ..."
"... And Erdogan regards the YPG as kinfolk and comrades of the Kurdish terrorist PKK in Turkey. A week ago, he threatened to attack the Kurds in northern Syria, though U.S. troops are embedded alongside them. What kind of deal did Trump strike with Erdogan? Turkey will purchase the U.S. Patriot anti-aircraft and missile defense system for $3.5 billion, and probably forego the Russian S-400. Trump also told Erdogan that we "would take a look at" extraditing Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen whom the Turkish president says instigated the 2016 coup attempt that was to end with his assassination. ..."
"... The war party project, to bring about regime change in Tehran through either crippling sanctions leading to insurrection or a U.S.-Iranian clash in the Gulf, will suffer a severe setback with the U.S. pullout from Syria. ..."
"We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there," wrote President Donald
Trump as he ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Syria, stunning the U.S. foreign
policy establishment.
Trump overruled his secretaries of state and defense, and jolted this city and capitals
across NATO Europe and the Middle East.
Yet Trump is doing exactly what he promised to do in his campaign. And what his decision
seems to say is this:
We are extricating America from the forever war of the Middle East so foolishly begun by
previous presidents. We are coming home. The rulers and peoples of this region are going to
have to find their own way and fight their own wars. We are not so powerful that we can fight
their wars while also confronting Iran and North Korea and facing new cold wars with Russia and
China.
As for the terrorists of ISIS, says Trump, they are defeated.
Yet despite the heavy casualties and lost battles ISIS has suffered, along with the collapse
of the caliphate and expulsion from its Syrian capital Raqqa and Iraqi capital Mosul and from
almost all territories it controlled in both countries, the group is not dead. It lives on in
thousands of true believers hidden in those countries. And like al-Qaeda, it has followers
across the Middle East and inspires haters of the West living in the West.
The U.S. pullout from Syria is being called a victory for Vladimir Putin. "Russia, Iran,
Assad are ecstatic!" wailed Senator Lindsey Graham.
Graham was echoed by Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who called the withdrawal a "retreat" and
charged that Trump's generals "believe the high-fiving winners today are Iran, ISIS and
Hezbollah."
But ISIS is a Sunni terrorist organization. And as such, it detests the Alawite regime of
Bashar Assad, and Hezbollah and Iran, both of which are viewed by ISIS as Shiite heretics.
"Russia, Iran, Syria are not happy about the US leaving," Trump tweeted, "despite what the Fake
News says, because now they will have to fight ISIS and others, who they hate, without us."
If Putin, victorious in the Syrian civil war, wishes to fight al-Qaeda and ISIS, the last
major enemies of Assad in Syria, why not let him?
The real losers?
Certainly the Kurds, who lose their American ally. Any dream they had of greater autonomy
inside Syria, or an independent state, is not going to be realized. But then, that was never
really in the cards.
Forced to choose between Turkey, with 80 million people and the second-largest army in
NATO, which sits astride the Dardanelles and Bosphorus entrance to the Black Sea, and the
stateless Kurds with their Syrian Democratic Forces, or YPG, Trump chose Recep Tayyip
Erdogan.
And Erdogan regards the YPG as kinfolk and comrades of the Kurdish terrorist PKK in
Turkey. A week ago, he threatened to attack the Kurds in northern Syria, though U.S. troops are
embedded alongside them. What kind of deal did Trump strike with Erdogan? Turkey will purchase
the U.S. Patriot anti-aircraft and missile defense system for $3.5 billion, and probably forego
the Russian S-400. Trump also told Erdogan that we "would take a look at" extraditing Muslim
cleric Fethullah Gulen whom the Turkish president says instigated the 2016 coup attempt that
was to end with his assassination.
National security advisor John Bolton, who said U.S. troops would remain in Syria until all
Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias have been expelled, appears not to have been speaking
for his president. And if the Israelis were relying on U.S. forces in Syria to intercept any
Iranian weapons shipments headed to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Damascus, then they are going
to have to make other arrangements.
The war party project, to bring about regime change in Tehran through either crippling
sanctions leading to insurrection or a U.S.-Iranian clash in the Gulf, will suffer a severe
setback with the U.S. pullout from Syria.
However, given the strength of the opposition to a U.S. withdrawal -- Israel, Saudi Arabia,
the GOP foreign policy establishment in Congress and the think tanks, liberal interventionists
in the Beltway press, Trump's own national security team of advisors -- the battle to overturn
Trump's decision has probably only just begun.
From FDR's abandonment of 100 million East Europeans to Stalin at Yalta in 1945 to the
abandonment of our Nationalist Chinese allies to Mao in 1949 and of our South Vietnamese allies
in 1975, America has often been forced into retreats leading to the deaths of allies. Senator
Sasse says Trump is risking the same outcome: "A lot of American allies will be slaughtered if
this retreat is implemented."
But is that true?
Trump's decision to pull out of Syria at least has assured us of a national debate on what
it will mean to America to extricate our country from these Mideast wars. It is the kind of
debate we have not had in the 15 years since we were first deceived into invading Iraq.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made
and Broke a President and Divided America Forever . To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and
read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at
www.creators.com .
I believe "Syria" is a war crime planned and plotted by some western governments and their
allies. They are even reportedly financing and assisting terrorists. Which is criminal and
treasonous
-- -- --
"With their command and control centre based in Istanbul, Turkey, military supplies from
Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular were transported by Turkish intelligence to the border
for rebel acquisition. CIA operatives along with Israeli and Jordanian commandos were also
training FSA rebels on the Jordanian-Syrian border with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
In addition, other reports show that British and French military were also involved in these
secret training programmes. It appears that the same FSA rebels receiving this elite training
went straight into ISIS – last month one ISIS commander, Abu Yusaf, said, 'Many of the
FSA people who the west has trained are actually joining us.'" Nafeez Ahmed http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/12/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state/
-- -- -- -- --
"Under U.S. law it is illegal for any American to provide money or assistance to al-Qaeda,
ISIS or other terrorist groups. If you or I gave money, weapons or support to al-Qaeda or
ISIS, we would be thrown in jail. Yet the U.S. government has been violating this law for
years, quietly supporting allies and partners of al-Qaeda, ISIL, Jabhat Fateh al Sham and
other terrorist groups with money, weapons, and intelligence support, in their fight to
overthrow the Syrian government.[i] Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, December 8, 2016,Press Release.
https://gabbard.house.gov/news/press-releases/video-rep-tulsi-gabbard-introduces-legislation-stop-arming-terrorists
-- -- -- -- --
There is further abundant evidence available at links below: http://graysinfo.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-christmas-report-on-crimes-of-war.html
"At the very least, America will have its first serious debate on its Mideast wars since 2003
. It is the kind of debate we have not had in the 15 years since we were first deceived into
invading Iraq."
Finally Mr Buchanan and I agree on something of substance. And I cannot believe I am in
agreement with Trump on this too (even though it was quite clumsy). Will wonders never
cease?
I hate that Trump will probably throw the Kurds under the bus since they acted as our
allies and suffered for it. And if I was Mr Fethullah Gulen I would be packing my bags for
Canada.
However, well done, sir. Now let the debate begin.
I think what is to be accomplished by the US staying in the Middle East? Hasn't over 17 years
and $600 billion spent and over a million dead been price enough? Hopefully, Syria is the 1st
step in ending American military involvement in the Middle East. America has enough to do in
taking care of serious issues here at home. As for the Middle East, let Israel, Saudia
Arabia, Turkey, Iran and other countries and ethnic groups who reside there solve their own
damn problems.
As a European it feels strange to feel this pro-Trump all of a sudden. Before you know it,
I'll order a MAGA cap (I'm always safe with that because carnaval is coming).
Russia just landed a nuclear bomber in Venezuela. Russia and China are making SIGNIFICANT
inroads in the Caribbean, Central America, South America and Africa.
If Israel comes under serious threat, the US will be there to assist in its defense but
the time has come when the US has to admit that the parasite freeloader nations like Europe
and Israel are coming at to high a cost a cost that is both distracting and obstructing the
US from being where it is really needed to deal with China and Russia.
People sit on their collective fat asses inside The Beltway within the confines of some book
lined conference room and make decisions involving the lives of thousands of young men and
women–other people's sons and daughters (never their own)– who may be dispatched
to take a bullet in anger. And over what? Making the MidEast "free for democracy"?
I dislike Trump even though I reluctantly voted for him only to keep the Congenital Liar
out of the White House. One of the few positives he exhibited was a desire to extricate the
United States from that MidEast hell-hole. For once at least he has delivered. Whether he
will succeed, however, remains to be seen. After all, the Beltway is swarming with chicken
hawks.
Very zero sum gain way of thinking. How can the US not spending hundreds of billions on a
lost cause be a win for Russia? Sounds more like a win for the US. I think the Syrian
government with Russia and Iran should be enough to demolish the physical caliphate.
Destroying ISIS ? Good luck with that suppress it OK but destroy easier said then done. How
have we done against, the Mafia? the IRA? drug cartels and so on and so forth. For those who
want to stay is there ever a set of conditions which would be satisfied allowing you to
leave? We are still in Germany, I think the Nazis are gone you can relax, if it was the
Soviets you worry about also gone by about 3 decades. If we can't accept that Germany is
sufficiently stable to no longer be blessed with our presence when oh when would Syria be
viewed as stable?
I have regretted voting for trump for many reasons. I concede that IF USA military leaves
Syria, this is a very positive development. He should now do the same for Afghanistan and
many other places around the world.
Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and the Syrian military have done a fine job of keeping IS on the
run. Let's hope they can finish the job.
In this issue at least I support Trump a hundred percent, and I think a lot of Americans
agree.
He's finally doing what he promised to do during the campaign.
I have been very unhappy with him, but if he follows through on this I'll give him credit.
Given the lock that the elites and establishment have on the media, it took guts. It's good
to see he has some.
While I didn't vote for this excrescence in The White House, I will give credit where credit
is due. Hillary's neocon impulses would have been infinitely worse here.
Still, looking at this past week, I can't help thinking about that whole Flight 93 thing.
But two years into The Trump presidency, it's starting to look more like that disaster movie
camp-fest Airport 1975, where we have crossed-eyed stewardess Karen Black trying to land the
stricken 747. In her immortal words to flight control: "Something hit us! There's no one left
to fly the plane! HELP US! OH MY GOD HELP US!!!"
ISIS was created by the US as a part of its divide and conquer strategy. General Flynn blew
the whistle on it which is why he has been vilified. Flynn spoke the truth on ISIS and lied
to the FBI! Horrors.
Now ISIS has been "defeated" and the US Quixote can focus on other windmills.
Except now comes the Syria encore, Afghanistan. Chalk up another loss for team USA.
Flynn "treason" is not related to Russia probe and just confirm that Nueller in engaged in witch hunt.
I believe half of Senate and House of Representative might go to jail if they were dug with the ferocity Mueller digs Flynn's past.
So while Flynn behavior as Turkey lobbyist (BTW Turkey is a NATO country and not that different int his sense from the US -- and you
can name a lot of UK lobbyists in high echelons of the US government, starting with McCabe and Strzok) is reprehensible, this is still a witch hunt
When American law enforcement and intelligence officials, who carry Top Secret clearances and authority to collect intelligence
or pursue a criminal investigation, decide to employ lies and intimidation to silence or intimidates those who worked for Donald
Trump's Presidency, we see shadow of Comrage Stalin Great Terror Trials over the USA.
Former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn passes by members of the
media as he departs after his sentencing was delayed at U.S. District Court in
Washington, U.S., December 18, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
By Jan Wolfe and Ginger Gibson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge fiercely criticized President Donald
Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Tuesday for lying to
FBI agents in a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and
delayed sentencing him until Flynn has finished helping prosecutors.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan told Flynn, a retired U.S. Army
lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency,
that he had arguably betrayed his country. Sullivan also noted that Flynn had
operated as an undeclared lobbyist for Turkey even as he worked on Trump's
campaign team and prepared to be his White House national security adviser.
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his December 2016
conversations with Sergei Kislyak, then Russia's ambassador in Washington,
about U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow by the administration of Trump's
Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, after Trump's election victory but before
he took office.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, leading the investigation into possible
collusion between Trump's campaign team and Russia ahead of the election, had
asked the judge not to sentence Flynn to prison because he had already
provided "substantial" cooperation over the course of many interviews.
But Sullivan sternly told Flynn his actions were abhorrent, noting that
Flynn had also lied to senior White House officials, who in turn misled the
public. The judge said he had read additional facts about Flynn's behavior
that have not been made public.
At one point, Sullivan asked prosecutors if Flynn could have been charged
with treason, although the judge later said he had not been suggesting such a
charge was warranted.
"Arguably, you sold your country out," Sullivan told Flynn. "I'm not hiding
my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense."
Flynn, dressed in a suit and tie, showed little emotion throughout the
hearing, and spoke calmly when he confirmed his guilty plea and answered
questions from the judge.
Sullivan appeared ready to sentence Flynn to prison but then gave him the
option of a delay in his sentencing so he could fully cooperate with any
pending investigations and bolster his case for leniency. The judge told Flynn
he could not promise that he would not eventually sentence him to serve prison
time.
Flynn accepted that offer. Sullivan did not set a new date for sentencing
but asked Mueller's team and Flynn's attorney to give him a status report by
March 13.
Prosecutors said Flynn already had provided most of the cooperation he
could, but it was possible he might be able to help investigators further.
Flynn's attorney said his client is cooperating with federal prosecutors in a
case against Bijan Rafiekian, his former business partner who has been charged
with unregistered lobbying for Turkey.
Rafiekian pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to those charges in federal court
in Alexandria, Virginia. His trial is scheduled for Feb. 11. Flynn is
expected to testify.
Prosecutors have said Rafiekian and Flynn lobbied to
have Washington extradite a Muslim cleric who lives in the United States
and is accused by Turkey's government of backing a 2016 coup attempt. Flynn
has not been charged in that case.
'LOCK HER UP!'
Flynn was a high-profile adviser to Trump's campaign team. At the
Republican Party's national convention in 2016, Flynn led Trump's
supporters in cries of "Lock her up!" directed against Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton.
A group of protesters, including some who chanted "Lock him up,"
gathered outside the courthouse on Tuesday, along with a large inflatable
rat fashioned to look like Trump. Several Flynn supporters also were there,
cheering as he entered and exited. One held a sign that read, "Michael
Flynn is a hero."
Flynn became national security adviser when Trump took office in January
2017, but lasted only 24 days before being fired.
He told FBI investigators on Jan. 24, 2017, that he had not discussed
the U.S. sanctions with Kislyak when in fact he had, according to his plea
agreement. Trump has said he fired Flynn because he also lied to Vice
President Mike Pence about the contacts with Kislyak.
Trump has said Flynn did not break the law and has voiced support for
him, raising speculation the Republican president might pardon him.
"Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn. Will be interesting
to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him,
about Russian Collusion in our great and, obviously, highly successful
political campaign. There was no Collusion!" Trump wrote on Twitter on
Tuesday morning.
After the hearing, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters
the FBI had "ambushed" Flynn in the way agents questioned him, but said his
"activities" at the center of the case "don't have anything to do with the
president" and disputed that Flynn had committed treason.
"We wish General Flynn well," Sanders said.
In contrast, Trump has called his former long-time personal lawyer
Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to separate charges, a "rat."
Mueller's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election and
whether Trump has unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe has cast a shadow
over his presidency. Several former Trump aides have pleaded guilty in
Mueller's probe, but Flynn was the first former Trump White House official
to do so. Mueller also has charged a series of Russian individuals and
entities.
Trump has called Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt" and has denied
collusion with Moscow.
Russia has denied meddling in the election, contrary to the conclusion
of U.S. intelligence agencies that have said Moscow used hacking and
propaganda to try to sow discord in the United States and boost Trump's
chances against Clinton.
Lying to the FBI carries a statutory maximum sentence of five years in
prison. Flynn's plea agreement stated that he was eligible for a sentence
of between zero and six months.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Ginger
Gibson; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Kieran Murray and
Will Dunham)
"... christophere steele admitted before a british court today that he was hired by the clintons/obama/DNC to make up the dossier as a weapon to use against trump as a backup plan in case he won the election.. this proves the DNC lied, paid for a fake dossier, and comey admitted he knew the fake dossier was false before using it to get a FISC warrant and to spy on trump, which was used as an excuse for the mueller investigation.. yahoo news and leftwing media arent covering the story.. educate yourselves ..."
1 hour ago
When I read articles like this I look to see who wrote it, printed it etc. When I see
Bloomberg, Yahoo, HuffPo I approach it as fake news. Now I no longer watch any of Fox news
as they are fast becoming just like the rest of the propaganda outlets. This is just
inflammatory anti Trump drivel with no basis in fact.
O 1 hour
ago Was this the interview report that was written 7 months after the interview?
R 44 minutes ago
Actually this story is not accurate. Mueller released copies of the 302 memos, which are in
effect official documentation to a case file. The 302 was dated seven months after the
interview, when the FBI policy requires such reports to be filed within five days. The
judge will ask tomorrow for copies of agent's contemporaneous interview notes and any other
documents supporting what is written in the 302, as well as an explanation for the delay in
filing the memo. 1
hour ago You mean the notes the FBI, in the person of one Peter Strzok, (yes that Strozk)
made seven months after he was interviewed? with the required 302 documents that are either
to be taken extemporaneously or done within days of the interview being dated months later?
You mean those notes?!!!! Nice try Bloomberg, but no amount of yellow journalism spin will
stop this case from being thrown out! 15 minutes ago christophere steele
admitted before a british court today that he was hired by the clintons/obama/DNC to make
up the dossier as a weapon to use against trump as a backup plan in case he won the
election.. this proves the DNC lied, paid for a fake dossier, and comey admitted he knew
the fake dossier was false before using it to get a FISC warrant and to spy on trump, which
was used as an excuse for the mueller investigation.. yahoo news and leftwing media arent
covering the story.. educate yourselves 1 hour ago Not so bias garbage news .. they
entrapped him what 302 form you want to go with .. FBI doctored the original.. FBI
curuption runs rampant.. comey lied so much about knowing about fake dossier.. then what
the hell was he doing.. comey the tall guy phony
On Friday, 14 December 2018, the office of "special counsel" Robert Mueller filed a reply to Gen. Michael Flynn's sentencing
memorandum by the court's deadline, as noted on the court clerk's docket sheet--
"12/14/2018 56 REPLY by USA as to MICHAEL T. FLYNN to Defendant's Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing (Attachments: # 1 Attachment
A, # 2 Attachment B)(Van Grack, Brandon) (Entered: 12/14/2018)".
Judge Emmet Sullivan in an order on 12 December stated: "In 50 defendant's memorandum in aid of sentencing, the
defendant quotes and cites a 'Memorandum dated Jan. 24, 2017.' See page 8 n. 21, 22. The defendant also quotes and cites a 'FD-302
dated Aug. 22, 2017.' See page 9 n. 23-27. The defendant is ORDERED to file on the docket FORTHWITH the cited Memorandum and FD-302.
The Court further ORDERS the government to file on the docket any 302s or memoranda relevant to the circumstances discussed on
pages 7-9 of the defendant's sentencing memorandum by no later than 3:00 p.m. on December 14, 2018."
In response to Judge Sullivan's order, the Mueller group attached to its reply memo two noticeably blacked out (redacted) documents,
which turned out to be the same ones that were referred to in Flynn's memo raising the issue of FBI conduct surrounding his interview,
and were nothing additional or new!
The government's reply and two documents that were filed are here--
The two redacted documents are the "January 24, 2017" memo and the "FD-302 dated Aug. 22, 2017", which were cited in the court's
order and which Flynn's lawyers apparently already had, or knew what they were about. Judge Sullivan ordered the Mueller
group to produce "any 302s or memoranda relevant to the circumstances discussed on pages 7-9
of the defendant's sentencing memorandum", not just the two that were already known [emphasis added]. The "Attachment B"
is not the form 302 by an agent who interviewed Flynn on 24 January 2017, but rather is a 302 report by an unknown person of an
interview of now former FBI agent Peter Strzok on 20 July 2017, in which Strzok allegedly talks about some things that happened
on 24 January.
Unless the "special counsel" filed a complete set of unredacted documents with a motion (request) for leave to file them under
seal, the reply is on its face a violation of the court's disclosure order.
As 'blue peacock' said in a comment to the posting
on this issue of 14 December, it will be interesting to see what Judge Sullivan does about the response by the Mueller group.
Both documents are heavily blacked out. The form 302 does include the language that the agents at the Flynn interview
"had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying". Since this had already been
revealed in news and mass media reports, they basically had to disclose that little part, otherwise it probably would have
been redacted as well.
On the bottom right corner of each page is a number, which is usually referred to as a "Bates stamp", after the name of
the numbering machines that are often used to number and identify documents that are produced in a lawsuit [1]. The pages
on the form 302 are numbered DOJSCO-700021201 to 05. The one-page typed paper (Attachment A) has number DOJSCO-700021215.
There are nine pages between those pages, but what those might be is not disclosed.
The Justice Department, FBI, and other federal departments are capable of trying to play semantic word games with requests
for information, such that if the exact name or abbreviation of the document or class of documents is not requested, they will
leave them out of their response. In this instance, the judge asked for "any 302s or memoranda" relevant to the circumstances.
The FBI has guidelines about the different types of records it keeps and they can have different names, such as LHM (letterhead
memorandum), EC (electronic communication), original note material, the FD-302, and so forth. There are also different
types of files and records systems. Thus, there may be some ducking and dodging of the court's order on the theory that
the exact types of records were not in the order.
Documents and records may also be generated when any investigative activity is started or requires approval, such as an
assessment, preliminary investigation, or a full investigation. Furthermore, an interesting issue is the type of authorized
activity the Flynn interview was part of: an assessment, preliminary investigation, or full investigation. Although
it is significantly redacted (in this instance whited out instead of blacked out), the FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations
Guide contains some useful information for trying to figure out what is going on with this issue [2].
If this problem with disclosure is not bad enough, on 11 December the Justice Department Inspector General (OIG) issued
a report with the bland title, "Report of Investigation: Recovery of Text Messages from Certain FBI Mobile Devices"-- https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2018/i-2018-003523.pdf
The OIG investigation began when it was discovered that there was a "gap in text message data collection during the period
December 15, 2016, through May 17, 2017, from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) mobile devices assigned to FBI employees
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page relevant to a matter being investigated by the OIG's Oversight and Review Division". Those
names are familiar. Thousands of the text messages were recovered.
In addition, the report states: "In view of the content of many of the text messages between Strzok and Page, the
OIG also asked the Special Counsel's Office (SCO) to provide to the OIG the DOJ issued iPhones that had been assigned to Strzok
and Page during their respective assignments to the SCO".
The result? After Strzok was forced to leave the special counsel's office, his iPhone was given to another FBI agent
and reset, wiping out the data. The Mueller group's "records officer" told the inspector general's office that "as part
of the office's records retention procedure, the officer reviewed Strzok's DOJ issued iPhone after he returned it to the SCO
and determined it contained no substantive text messages". In other words, after the Strzok and Page scandal erupted
because of text messages while Strzok was at the special counsel's office, the Mueller group decided itself that his other
cellular phone issued to him by the Department of Justice for the special counsel's office had no "substantive" messages on
it.
Strzok's paramour, Lisa Page, also had an iPhone issued to her by the Justice Department while she was at the special counsel's
office. The Mueller group said it could not find her phone, but it eventually was located at the DOJ's Justice Management
Division. It had been reset, wiping out the data, on 31 July 2017.
"...the officer reviewed Strzok's DOJ issued iPhone after he returned it to the SCO and determined it contained no substantive
text messages"..."
So what is the officer's name, what criterea was used in the review and just what relationship to the extended cast of characters
does this individual have?
It seems to me that this is very big news. Can it be that the Straight Arrow is bent, after all? This is amazing. There is
an article in the Daily Caller: "Powell: New Facts Indicate Mueller Destroyed Evidence..."
dailycaller.com/2018/12/16/...
As a former/retired Agent, I have combed through every piece of information regarding Mike's case, as if I was combing through
evidence in the hundreds of cases I have successfully handled while in the FBI.
The publicly reported Brady material alone, in this case, outweighs any statement given by any FBI Agent (we now know
at least one FD-302 was changed), Special Prosecutor investigator report, and any other party still aggressively seeking
that this case remain and be sentenced as a felony. Quite simply, I cannot see justice being served by branding LtG. Michael
Flynn a convicted felon, when the truth is still being revealed while policies, ethics, and laws have been violated by those
pursuing this case.
We now know all FBI employees involved in Mike Flynn's case have either been fired, forced to resign or forced to retire
because of their excessive lack of candor, punitive biases, leaking of information, and extensive cover-up of their deeds.
Michael Flynn has always displayed overwhelming candor and forthrightness.
The decision to indict Flynn ruins " esprit de corps " in the USA intelligence community. So
Partaigenosser Mulkler trying to depose Trump oversteped the "norms" of intelligence community.
And if CIA allied with FBI against DIA that's a bad sign. It looks like the US elite was split
into two warring camps that will fight for power absolutely ruthlessly.
As for "In the report, the two agents describe Flynn as being very open and noted said Flynn 'clearly saw the FBI agents
as allies.' " the question arise how he got the to position of the head of DIA with such astounding level of naivety.
If anyone from FBI does not want your lawyer to be present you should probably have a lawyer present.
Notable quotes:
"... "The agents did not provide Gen. Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement under 18 U.S.C. 1001 before, during, or after the interview," the Flynn memo says. ..."
"... According to the 302, before the interview, McCabe and other FBI officials "decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed , and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport." ..."
"... McCabe, who has since been fired for lying to the DOJ's Office of Inspector General about leaking information to the media, also asked Flynn not to have his lawyer present during the initial meeting with the FBI agents. ..."
"... On Thursday, FBI Supervisory Agent Jeff Danik told SaraACarter.com that Sullivan must also request all the communications between the two agents, as well as their supervisors around the August 2017 time-frame in order to get a complete and accurate picture of what transpired. Danik, who is an expert in FBI policy, says it is imperative that Sullivan also request "the workflow chart, which would show one-hundred percent, when the 302s were created when they were sent to a supervisor and who approved them." ..."
"... Flynn was found guilty by Mueller on one count of lying to the FBI. Supporters of Flynn have questioned Mueller's tactics in getting the retired three-star general to plead guilty to this one count of lying. ..."
"... In the report, the two agents describe Flynn as being very open and noted said Flynn "clearly saw the FBI agents as allies." Flynn is described as discussing a variety of "subjects." The report includes his openness regarding Trump's "knack for interior design," the hotels he stayed at during his campaign, as well as other issues. ..."
"... It would appear that the branch of government that may be out of control (by the Supreme Court) is the judiciary. It is the court rules and failure of the Supreme Court to act and weed its subordinate courts, that allowed much of this to happen. The FISA Court has been a rubber stamp. No judge is held accountable for failure to obtain justice in their court. ..."
"... Could Mueller's whole appointment be meant to protect the Clinton empire? ..."
The Special Counsel's Office released key documents related to former National Security
Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn Friday. Robert Mueller's office had until 3 p.m. to get the
documents to Judge Emmet Sullivan, who demanded information Wednesday after
bombshell information surfaced in a memorandum submitted by Flynn's attorney's that led to
serious concerns regarding the FBI's initial questioning of the retired three-star general.
The highly redacted documents included notes from former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe
regarding his conversation with Flynn about arranging the interview with the FBI. The initial
interview took place at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017.
The documents also include the FBI's "302" report regarding Flynn's interview with
anti-Trump former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka when they met with him at
the White House. It is not, however, the 302 document from the actual January, 2017 interview
but an August, 2017 report of Strzok's recollections of the interview.
Flynn's attorney's had noted in their memorandum to the courts that the documents revealed
that FBI officials made the decision not to provide Flynn with his Miranda Rights, which
would've have warned him of penalties for making false statements.
"The agents did not provide Gen. Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false
statement under 18 U.S.C. 1001 before, during, or after the interview," the Flynn memo
says.
According to the 302, before the interview, McCabe and other FBI officials "decided the
agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they
wanted Flynn to be relaxed , and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely
affect the rapport."
McCabe, who has since been fired for lying to the DOJ's Office of Inspector General about
leaking information to the media, also asked Flynn not to have his lawyer present during the
initial meeting with the FBI agents.
The July 2017 report, however, was the interview with Strzok. It described his interview
with Flynn but was not the original Flynn interview.
Apparent discrepancies within the 302 documents are being questioned by may former senior
FBI officials, who state that there are stringent policies in place to ensure that the
documents are guarded against tampering.
On Thursday, FBI Supervisory Agent Jeff Danik told SaraACarter.com that Sullivan must also request all the
communications between the two agents, as well as their supervisors around the August 2017
time-frame in order to get a complete and accurate picture of what transpired. Danik, who is an
expert in FBI policy, says it is imperative that Sullivan also request "the workflow chart,
which would show one-hundred percent, when the 302s were created when they were sent to a
supervisor and who approved them."
He stressed, "the bureau policy – the absolute FBI policy – is that the notes
must be placed in the system in a 1-A file within five days of the interview." Danik said that
the handwritten notes get placed into the FBI Sentinel System, which is the FBI's main record
keeping system. "Anything beyond five business days is a problem, eight months is a disaster,"
he added.
In the redacted 302 report Strzok and Pientka said they "both had the impression at the time
that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying." Information that Flynn was not lying
was first published
and reported by SaraACarter.com.
Flynn was found guilty by Mueller on one count of lying to the FBI. Supporters of Flynn have
questioned Mueller's tactics in getting the retired three-star general to plead guilty to this
one count of lying.
In the report, the two agents describe Flynn as being very open and noted said Flynn
"clearly saw the FBI agents as allies." Flynn is described as discussing a variety of
"subjects." The report includes his openness regarding Trump's "knack for interior design," the
hotels he stayed at during his campaign, as well as other issues.
"Flynn was so talkative, and had so much time for them, that Strzok wondered if the
national security adviser did not have more important things to do than have a such a
relaxed, non-pertinent discussion with them," it said.
The documents turned over by Mueller also reveal that other FBI personnel "later argued
about the FBI's decision to interview Flynn." Tags Law Crime
Basically McCabe and others in his unit are totally discredited. He should have this
quashed and the case thrown out of court. No Miranda rights, therefore no lying to FBI.
Why didn't Flynn demand his day in court? He would have won. I am not buying the ********
argument about him being run into bankruptcy. Hell, he could have represented himself and
still won the case at trial. In addition, I am not buying this ******** argument that he
agreed to plead guilty because he was afraid the Mueller would go after his son. Does anyone
know what Flynn's son does for a living? Why would he be afraid?
Flynn was found guilty by Mueller on one count of lying to the FBI.
No! Flynn was not f ound guilty by Mueller on one count of lying. The FBI is an
investigative body (at best) not a judicial body. Only a jury or a judge acting in lieu of a
jury can find someone guilty of anything.
Flynn plead guilty to one count of lying because to have plead innocent would have
bankrupted him in legal fees. However, it's interesting that this ZH article stated that
Mueller found Flynn guilty. In federal courts these days, once you're charged with a crime
you will be found guilty. FBI, DEA, BATF, IRS...whoever, you do not get a fair trial. Federal
judges are hard-wired to find guilt. Vicious and ambitious federal prosecutors have only one
interest, to rack up successful prosecutions. Federal juries are intimidated by the brute
force of the federal system and, I suspect, fear that if they don't bring in a verdict
satisfactory to the prosecutor, they may be investigated themselves. "Investigation" in the
federal sense means that they will be relentlessly harassed forever by the federal
government
My small experience as a juror is that state prosecutors and judges are no different than
what you describe for the federal system. We found a guy non-guilty (not a close call either)
that the judge wanted convicted, and he came back and questioned us about our logic. Casually
of course. I just said the guy was innocent beyond a reasonable doubt. Judge wasn't
pleased.
Flynn is an idiot.... why agree to talk to the FBI at all.... as Martha Stewart found
out.... if they can't make the case for what they're investigating... they'll just find some
statement in your "interview" that they claim was not true.... no matter if it was your
intention to lie or just a recollection that was wrong... and charge you with that!
Simple answer is that if law enforcement wants to "talk" to you they're looking to get
information to charge you.... simple reply.... FU... I want a lawyer!
The compromise of classified docs was really sort of candy-assed, everybody knew it . .
.
Rewind the tape, and you will find the contrite Petreaus in front of any and all
microphones confessing to his affair with Broadwell, which he repeatedly stated began on some
certain date . . .conveniently AFTER his confirmation as CIA director . . .
. . .certainly Petreaus was asked in his FBI background interview if he was involved in
any affairs. And he certainly said no.
So, Paula, since I'm on all the networks at the moment, I know you can hear me, our affair
started on X date, in case the FBI gets a notion to ask you (which they did not.)
See, the FBI takes lying seriously. But somebody must have said something along the lines
of: hey, Petreaus is a good guy, I hope you can find a way to let him off easy.
But when faced with financial destruction, your kids being threatened, and false evidence
against you, you sometimes admit to the charges to make a deal...
The military is realizing they are not on the same team with FBI, CIA, DOJ.
Why do you think they have tried so hard to keep NSA under military leadership? Wink,
wink...
Leguran
It would appear that the branch of government that may be out of control (by the Supreme Court) is the judiciary. It
is the court rules and failure of the Supreme Court to act and weed its subordinate courts, that allowed much of this to
happen. The FISA Court has been a rubber stamp. No judge is held accountable for failure to obtain justice in their court.
The Chief Justice has refused to accept that judges can employ personal poliltical beliefs in court. All courts are
subordinate to the US Supreme Court and therefore the Supreme Court has a duty to ensure justice not just to decide whether
cases are 'sufficiently mature' to come before the Supreme Court. In other words, the Judiciary needs to be disturbed from
their lifetime appointments and made conditional appointments. The Supreme Court needs to deal with incapacity within its own
ranks. All told, this shocking miscarriage of justice came about because the Judicial Branch of government allowed it to
happen. The Judicial Branch has run amok.
lizzie dw
IMO, Judge Emmet Sullivan needs to demand and receive the original UNREDACTED 302 about the Strzok/Pientka interview with
General Flynn. But, really, just by reading the pre-interview discussions of the FBI members involved, the whole thing sounds
fishy.
Caloot
Hedge headline:
Could Mueller's whole appointment be meant to protect the Clinton empire?
Like Trump or not, there are serious cracks appearing in the Clintons foundation.
Two days ago, federal judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington D.C.
ordered the "special counsel" Robert Mueller group to do the following by 3:00 p.m. eastern
time today, as shown on the court clerk's docket sheet--
"12/12/2018 MINUTE ORDER as to MICHAEL T. FLYNN. In 50 defendant's memorandum in aid of
sentencing, the defendant quotes and cites a 'Memorandum dated Jan. 24, 2017.' See page 8 n.
21, 22. The defendant also quotes and cites a 'FD-302 dated Aug. 22, 2017.' See page 9 n.
23-27. The defendant is ORDERED to file on the docket FORTHWITH the cited Memorandum and
FD-302. The Court further ORDERS the government to file on the docket any 302s or memoranda
relevant to the circumstances discussed on pages 7-9 of the defendant's sentencing memorandum
by no later than 3:00 p.m. on December 14, 2018. Should the parties seek to file such material
under seal, the parties may file motions for leave to do so. The government is also ORDERED to
file its reply to the defendant's sentencing memorandum by no later than 3:00 p.m. on December
14, 2018. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on 12/12/2018. (lcegs3) (Entered: 12/12/2018)"
Judge Sullivan is a Black lawyer who came up the hard way, going to Washington D.C. public
schools and Howard University and its law school. Howard University has been a reputable
university with a full curriculum as it provided education to Black Americans from the time of
segregation. He was appointed by three different U.S. presidents to judicial positions, by
Reagan, Bush sr, and Bill Clinton [1].
The actions and investigation regarding Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.) beginning when he was
removed as National Security Advisor to president Trump have seemed odd and not to square with
past behavior and the normal course of things. With little information available publicly it is
very difficult to look at the issue and pick through information, since it has been mainly
hidden behind the skirts of the Mueller "investigation", which was supposed to look at
"interference" by the Russian government in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Flynn's sentencing is set for next Tuesday, 18 December. However, that is subject to change,
depending on what is filed today. I will try to provide some relevant items from the court
clerk's file that you can read to bring yourself up to date about the court case from what is
available; some items are still filed under seal, and the probation office presentence
investigation report (PSI) is kept private as a matter of federal judicial policy.
That defense would be more effective if Flynn was a bewildered youth or someone with
diminished mental capacities being badgered in a police interrogation room.
Flynn certainly acted like a bewildered, naive person.
Did he think that the FBI was showing up to ask about his health?
Was he really the Director of DIA......or did he just stay in a Holiday Inn?
Thank you Robert. It's good to have someone like judge Sullivan presiding over this case.
We'll have to wait and see, but a lot of what I have gathered so far suggests Gen. Flynn is a
man of honorable character who has been raked over for mostly political reasons.
In the meantime, has anyone investigated the leak that supposedly caught Flynn talking to the
Russian Amb?
That apparently did harm sources and methods.
But,noooooooooo, no investigation.
The swamp cares not a whit for national security, but yet constantly lectures us
"deplorables" about their great talent and dedication - they'd all be Fortune 500 CEO's if
they weren't so dedicated.
There are probably a few dedicated talented people trying to do the right thing, but the
bureaucracy - including the Intel. agencies/FBI (VERY important people "risking" their lives,
BTW) - has shown over and over to be populated mostly by self-enriching slugs.
The leak was that USI and LE were listening in on the Russian Ambassador's conversations by
turning his smartphone into a hot mic by exploiting well-known SS7 vulnerabilities. This
hardly reveals anything new about sources and methods. Any one who wants to keep secrets
shouldn't be carrying a smartphone and any ambassador who thinks the host government doesn't
keep him under surveillance is hopelessly naive.
Was it a leak or was it just an assumption of the obvious surveillance of Kislyak? Pence is
the one who confirmed Flynn talked to Kislyak about lifting sanctions and lied to him about
it.
Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz has asked SaraACarter.com to post her letter to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan
in support of her friend and colleague retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who will be
sentenced on Dec. 18. The Special Counsel's Office has requested that Flynn not serve any
jail time due to his cooperation with Robert Mueller's office. Based on new information
contained in a memorandum submitted to the court this week by Flynn's attorney, Sullivan has
ordered Mueller's office to turn over all exculpatory evidence and government documents on
Flynn's case by mid-day Friday. Sullivan is also requesting any documentation regarding the
first interviews conducted by former anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka
-known by the FBI as 302s- which were found to be dated more than seven months after the
interviews were conducted on Jan. 24, 2017, a violation of FBI policy, say current and former
FBI officials familiar with the process. According to information contained in Flynn's
memorandum, the interviews were dated Aug. 22, 2017.
Read Gritz's letter below... (emphasis added)
The Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan. December 5, 2018 U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia
333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20001
Re: Sentencing of Lt. General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)
Dear Judge Sullivan:
I am submitting my letter directly since Mike Flynn's attorney has refused to submit it as
well as letters submitted by other individuals. I feel you need to hear from someone who was an
FBI Special Agent who not only worked with Mike, but also has personally witnessed and reported
unethical & sometimes illegal tactics used to coerce targets of investigations externally
and internally.
About Myself and FBI Career
For 16 years, I proudly served the American people as a Special Agent working diligently on
significant terrorism cases which earned noteworthy results and fostered substantial
interagency cooperation. Prior to serving in the FBI I was a Juvenile Probation Officer in
Camden, NJ. Currently, I am a Senior Information Security Metrics and Reporting Analyst with
Discover Financial Services in the Chicago Metro area. I have recently been named as a Senior
Fellow to the London Center for Policy Research.
While in the FBI, I served as a Special Agent, Supervisory Special Agent, Assistant
Inspector, Unit Chief, and a Senior Liaison Officer to the CIA. I served on the NSC's Hostage
and Personnel Working Group and brought numerous Americans out of captivity and was part of the
interagency team to codify policies outlining the whole of government approach to hostage
cases.
In November 2007, I was selected over 26 other candidates to become the Supervisory Special
Agent, CT Extraterritorial Squad; Washington Field Office (WFO) in Washington, DC. At WFO, I
led a squad of experts in extraterritorial evidence collection, overseas investigations,
operational security during terrorist attacks/events, and overseas criminal investigations. I
coordinated and managed numerous high profile investigations (Blackwater, Chuckie Taylor,
Robert Levinson, and other pivotal cases) comprised of teams from US and foreign intelligence,
military, and law enforcement agencies. I was commended for displaying comprehensive leadership
performance under pressure, extensive teamwork skills, while conducting critical investigative
analysis within and outside the FBI.
In December 2009, I was promoted to GS-15 Unit Chief (UC) of the Executive Strategy Unit,
Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD). While the UC, I codified the WMDD five-year
strategic plan, formulated goals and objectives throughout the division, while translating the
material into a directorate scorecard with cascading measurements reflecting functional and
operational unit areas. This was the only time in Washington, DC when I did not work with of
for McCabe.
From September to December 2010, I was selected as the FBI's top candidate to represent the
FBI, and the USG in a rigorous, intellectually stimulating; 12 week course for civilian
government officials, military officers, and government academics at the George C. Marshall
Center in Garmisch, Germany, Executive Program in Advanced Security Studies. The class was
comprised of 141 participants from 43 countries.
I have received numerous recommendations and commendations for my professionalism, liaison
and interpersonal ability and experience . Additionally, I have been rated Excellent or
Outstanding for my entire career, to include by Andrew McCabe when I was stationed at the
Washington Field Office. Further, other awards of note are: West Chester University 2005 Legacy
of Leadership recipient, Honored with House of Representatives Citation for Exemplary record of
Service, Leadership, and Achievements: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and Awarded with a framed
Horn of Africa blood chit from the Department of Defense and Office of the DASD (POW/MPA/MIA)
for my work in bringing Americans Out of captivity, "Patriot, Law Enforcement Warrior, and
Friend."
Length of Association with Flynn, McCabe, and Mueller
I met Michael Flynn in 2005, while working in the Counterterrorism Division (CTD) at FBI
Headquarters (FBIHQ).
I met then Supervisory Special Agent Andrew McCabe, when he reported to CTD at FBIHQ, around
the same time. McCabe subsequently was the Assistant Section Chief over my unit, my Assistant
Special Agent in Charge at the Washington Field Office, and the Assistant Director (AD) over
CTD when I encountered the discrimination and McCabe spearheaded the retaliation personally
(according to documentation) against me.
I have known both men for 12-13 years and worked directly with both throughout my career.
They are on the opposite spectrum of each other with regard to truthfulness, temperament, and
ethics, both professionally and personally.
I regularly briefed former FBI Director and Special Prosecutor Mueller on controversial and
complex cases and attended Deputies meetings at the White house with then Deputy Director
Pistole. I got along with both and trusted both. Watching what has been done to Mike and
knowing someone on the 7th floor had to have notified Mueller of my situation (Pistole had
retired), has been significantly distressing to me.
Lt.G. Michael T. Flynn:
Mike and I were counterparts on a DOJ-termed ground-breaking initiative which served as a
model for future investigations, policies, legislation and FBI programs in the Terrorist Use of
the Internet. For this multi-faceted and leading-edge joint operation, I was commended by Gen.
Stanley McChrystal, Gen. Keith Alexander (NSA Director), and LtG. Michael Flynn as well as
others for leading the FBI's pivotal participation in this dynamic and innovative interagency
operation. I received two The National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation (NIMUC) I for my
role in this operation. The NIMUC is an award of the National Intelligence Awards Program, for
contributions to the United States Intelligence Community.
Mick Flynn has consistently and candidly been honest and straightforward with me since the
day I met him in 2005. He has been a mentor and someone I trust to give me frank advice when I
ask for his opinion. His caring nature has shown through especially when he saw me being torn
apart by the FBI and he felt compelled to write a letter in support of me. He further took the
extra step to comment on my character in an NPR article and interview exposing the wrongdoings
in my case and others who have stood up for truth and against discrimination/retaliation.
Senator Grassley also commented on my behalf. NPR characterized this action against me as a
"warning shot" to individuals who stood up to individuals such as McCabe.
The day after I resigned from the FBI, while I was crying, Mike reached out and
congratulated me on my early retirement. I really needed to hear that from someone I respected
so much. His support for the last 13 years has been unparalleled and extremely valuable in
helping me get through the trauma of betrayal, unethical behavior, illegal activity executed
against me and to rebuild my life. Additionally, his support has helped my family in dealing
with their painful emotions regarding my situation. My parents wanted me to pass on to you that
they are blessed that I have had a compassionate and supportive individual on my side
throughout this trying time.
Mike has been a respected leader by his peers and by FBI Agents and Analysts who have
interacted with him. I personally feel he is the finest leader I have ever worked with or for
in my career. Our continued friendship and subsequent friendship with his family has helped all
of us cope with the stress a situation like this puts on individuals and families.
It is so very painful to watch an American hero, and my friend, torn apart like this. His
family has had to endure what no family should have to. I know this because of the damaging
effect my case had on my parent's health, finances, and emotional well-being. Mike and I both
had to sell our houses due to legal fees, endured smear campaigns (mostly by the same
individual, McCabe). I ended up being deemed homeless by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, was
on public assistance and endured extensive health and emotional damage due to the retaliation.
Mike kept in touch and kept me motivated. He has always reached out to help me with whatever he
could.
The Process is the Punishment
Thomas Fitton of Judicial Watch commented to me that the "Process is the punishment." This
is the most accurate description I have heard regarding the time Mike has gone through with
this process and the year and a half I was ostracized and idled before I resigned. This process
is one which many FBI employees, current, retired and former, feel was brought to the FBI by
Mueller and he subsequently brought this to the Special Prosecutor investigation.
It also fostered the behavior among FBI "leadership" which we find ourselves shocked at when
revealed on a daily basis. Is this the proper way to seek justice? I say no. I swore to uphold
the Constitution while protecting the civil rights of the American people. I believe many
individuals involved in Mike's case have lost their way and could care less about protection of
due process, civil and legal rights of who they are targeting. Mike has had extensive
punishment throughout this process. This process has punished him harder than anyone else
could.
Andrew McCabe
I believe I have a unique inside view of the mannerisms surrounding Andrew McCabe, other FBI
Executive Management and Former Director Mueller, as well as the unethical and coercive tactics
they use, not to seek the truth, but to coerce pleas or admissions to end the pain, as I call
it. They destroy lives for their own agendas instead of seeking the truth for the American
people. Candor is something that should be encouraged and used by leadership to have necessary
and continued improvement. Under Mueller, it was seen as a threat and viciously opposed by
those he pulled up in the chain of command.
I am explaining this because numerous Agents have expressed the need for you to know
McCabe's and Mueller's pattern of "target and destroy" has been utilized on many others,
without regard for policies and laws. I, myself, am a casualty of this reprehensible behavior
and I have spoken to well over 150 other FBI individuals who are casualties as well.
I am the individual who filed the Hatch Act complaint against McCabe and provided
significant evidentiary documents obtained via FOIA, open source, and information from current,
former, and retired Special Agents. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) asked why my filing of
the complaint was delayed from the actual acts. I said I personally thought I was providing
additional information to what should have been an automatic referral to OSC by FBI OPR. I was
notified I was the only complainant. This illustrates not only a fatal flaw in OPR AD Candice
Will not making the appropriate and crucial referral, but also shows the fear of those within
the FBI to report individuals like McCabe for fear of retaliation.
While serving at the CIA, detailed by the FBI in January 2012, I was responsible for
overseas investigations, as opposed to Continental United States-based (CONUS) cases.
Unfortunately, during my assignment at the CIA, I encountered extensive discrimination by two
FBI Special Agents and subsequently, in 2012, I filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)
complaint. Instead of addressing the issues, then CTD Assistant Director Andrew McCabe chose to
authorize a retaliatory Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigation against me,
five days after my EEO contact. The OPR referral he signed was authored by the two individuals
I had filed the EEO complaint against. In his signed sworn statement, McCabe admitted he knew I
had filed or was going to file the EEO.
Numerous members of my department at the CIA requested to be spoken with by CTD executive
management, regarding my work ethic and accomplishments. However, CTD, Inspection Division, and
OPR disregarded the list of names and contact numbers I submitted. This is an example of
knowing you are being targeted and the truth is not being sought.
Although my time at this position was short, I was commended by my CIA direct supervisor
for: "having already contributed more than your predecessor in the short time you have been
here." My predecessor had been assigned to the post for 18 months; I had been there four
months.
In contrast and showing lack of candor, McCabe wrote on official documents the following
statement, contradicting the actual direct supervisor I worked with daily:
"SA Gritz had to be removed from a prior position in an interagency environment, due to
inappropriate communications and general performance issues"
This is one of many comments McCabe used to discredit my reputation and to ostracize me.
McCabe knew me as someone who told the truth, worked hard, got results, and was always willing
to be flexible when needed. He was also acutely aware of the excellent relationships I had
formed in the USG interagency due to comments made by individuals from numerous agencies. Yet,
he continued to make false statements on official documents. He has done this to numerous other
very valuable FBI employees, destroying their careers and lives. He used similar tactics of
lies against Flynn. It should be noted, McCabe was very aware of my professional association
with Mike Flynn.
In July 5, 2012, I was involuntarily pulled back to CTD from the CIA. I was told McCabe made
the decision. A year and a month later, I resigned from the job I absolutely loved and was good
at. All because of the lack of candor of numerous individuals within the FBI.
Unethical and
dishonest investigative tactics
Throughout the last year, I have kept abreast of the revelations surrounding anything
related to Mike's case. I believe, from my years at the FBI and in exposing corruption and
discrimination, the circumstances surrounding the targeting, investigation, leaking, and
coercion of him to plea are all consistent with the unethical process I and many others have
witnessed at the FBI. The charge which Mike Flynn plead to was the result of deception,
intimidation, and bias/agenda. Simply, Mike is being branded a convicted felon due to an
unethical and dishonest investigation by people who were malicious, vindictive, and corrupt.
They wished to silence Mike, like they had once silenced me.
The American people have read the Strzok/Page text messages, the conflicting testimony and
lack of candor statements of former Director Comey, the perceived overstepping of the
reasonable scope of the Special Prosecutor's investigation, the extensive unethical,
untruthful, and outright illegal behavior of Andrew McCabe, to include slanderous statements
against Flynn, and the facts found within FOIA released documents and Congressional testimony.
As a former/retired Agent, I have combed through every piece of information regarding Mike's
case, as if I was combing through evidence in the hundreds of cases I have successfully handled
while in the FBI.
The publicly reported Brady material alone, in this case, outweighs any statement given by
any FBI Agent (we now know at least one FD-302 was changed), Special Prosecutor investigator
report, and any other party still aggressively seeking that this case remain and be sentenced
as a felony. Quite simply, I cannot see justice being served by branding LtG. Michael Flynn a
convicted felon, when the truth is still being revealed while policies, ethics, and laws have
been violated by those pursuing this case.
We now know all FBI employees involved in Mike Flynn's case have either been fired, forced
to resign or forced to retire because of their excessive lack of candor, punitive biases,
leaking of information, and extensive cover-up of their deeds.
Summation
Michael Flynn has always displayed overwhelming candor and forthrightness. One of the main
individuals involved in his case is Andrew McCabe, who used similar tactics against me in my
case, of which Mike Flynn defended me by penning a letter of character reference and is a
witness. Seeing McCabe was named as a Responding Management Official in my case, he should have
recused himself with anything having to do with a character witness on my behalf against him
and DOJ.
I'm told by numerous people, but have been unable to confirm, that McCabe was asked why he
was so viciously going after Flynn; my name was mentioned. I do know, from experience with
McCabe, he is a vindictive individual and I have no doubt Mike's support of me fueled McCabe's
disdain and personally vindictive aggressive unethical activities in this case . It matches his
behavior in my case.
Reliable fact-finding is essential to procedural due process and to the accuracy and
uniformity of sentencing. I'm unsure if the fact-finding in this case is reliable, nor do I
think we currently have all the facts.
The punishment which LtG. Flynn has already endured this past year, due to the nature of the
case, legal fees and reputation damage, is punishment enough. He is a true patriot, a loving
husband and father, a devoted grandfather, a trusted friend, and has a close knit family made
up of compassionate and honest individuals. To be branded a felon, is a major hit to a hero who
protected the American people for 33 years. I do not think society would benefit from Mike
Flynn going to jail nor being branded as a convicted felon. Not knowing the sentencing
guidelines for this charge but if there is any chance that the case can be downgraded to a
misdemeanor, this would be an act of justice that numerous Americans need to see to stay
hopeful for further justice.
This lady is seriously brave. She confirms one more reason i strongly support our Second
Amendment; it's to protect us from tyrants and corrupt people like McCabe, Ohr, Comey and
Mueller. Oh yes. I almost forget Rosenstein who should be hung for treason also.
WOW...all this time I had been asking where are the whistle blowers and kept saying,
certainly not all the FBI are this corrupt -and further asked are they being threatened to
not come forward?"
Well, the later sure seems true when you consider Ms. Gristz statements, particularly "
the fear of those within the FBI to report individuals like McCabe for fear of retaliation.
"
This is the level of corruption that ought to bring this entire cabal to their knees and
place them behind bars. Hopefully Judge Sullivan's intuitions will be bolstered by Ms.
Gristz' letter.
The FBI is corrupt to the core...from top to bottom. If she joined the FBI to "uphold the
Constitution" or "serve the American People" or some other horseshit then that was her first
mistake. The FBI is a completely corrupt & unconstitutional organization that protects
only the (((globalists))) and other enemies of freedom. The Hoover Buliding should be
padlocked and all of the agents of evil put on trial for treason.
Flynn was an example to the rest of the Trump supporters. His guilt or innocense was/is
meaningless and irrlevant to the Prog Attack Dogs. The message was/is clear:
"We are the Power. Resistance is futile. Bend your knee or we will destroy you."
It is prudent for reasonable people to believe that the Progs have spent the past couple
years destroying evidence that can be used against their gods (Obama, Clinton, Soros, etc.)
and their cohorts.
There is no penalty or negative consequence for the Mueller team who engaged in
"unethical" activity. None of them will have to answer to anyone or disgorge the millions of
dollars in "fees" they have been paid by the Sheeple.
All Progs must hang.
Christopher Wray must hang next.
"... Brexit can be considered as the rebuilding of the old nation state wall between England and the Continent. To an extent, this is a repudiation of the Globalist Movement, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Neo-Liberal Experiment. In it's essence, Trumps Wall is a repudiation of the NAFTA Consensus. The American 'deplorables' support it because they see it as a means of defending their livelihoods from those hordes of 'foreign' low wage workers. In both cases, it is a looking inwards. ..."
Brexit can be considered as the rebuilding of the old nation state wall between
England and the Continent. To an extent, this is a repudiation of the Globalist Movement, a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Neo-Liberal Experiment. In it's essence, Trumps Wall is a
repudiation of the NAFTA Consensus. The American 'deplorables' support it because they see it
as a means of defending their livelihoods from those hordes of 'foreign' low wage workers. In
both cases, it is a looking inwards.
Arguably, May is one of a generation of politicos in decline. Macron, (perhaps Merkel's
hope of having a posterity,) has caved. Merkel has seen the face of her political mortality
recently. May has her Pyrrhic victory.
The Clintons cannot even give tickets to their road show away. In all of these examples,
the replacements waiting in the wings are, to be charitable about it, underwhelming. Brexit
is but the opening act of a grand, worldwide crisis of governance.
How England muddles through this will be an object lesson for us all. We had better take
notes, because there will be a great testing later.
While the UK has rightly been the focus, I can't help wondering what the deeper feelings
are across Europe. It's very hard to gauge how much thought the rest of Europe is giving to
Brexit at this stage. The average punter seems very uninterested at this point, while a
growing number (from what I'm reading from other sources) just wish they'd get it over with
so the rest of Europe could be allowed to get on with its own internal concerns. I suspect
the rest of the EU economies most affected must be putting their 'crash-out' plans into
over-drive after this week's continuing escapades.
(Re: Sinn Féin. I was wondering if there was the remotest possibility that they
would cross their biggest line just to help a Tory government, and a particularly vile Tory
government from their standpoint. When speaking to veteran Belfast Republican during
negotiations on the GFA (Good Friday Agreement), their viewpoint was that nearly everything
could be negotiated but one thing was impossible: entering into a foreign London parliament.
Symbolically and practically, it was a step beyond the pale. I also noticed lately that a
couple of older Sinn Féin Republicans, who had to be persuaded into the negotiation
camp all those years ago, are again contemplating running for local government positions in
the North.)
Everything I've read indicates that the rest of Europe has simply given up on Brexit
– they are unwilling to expend any more energy or political capital on it. The leaders
have much bigger things on their plates than Brexit, and the general population have lost
interest – I'm told it rarely features much in reporting on the major media. I think
they'll grant an extension purely to facilitate another couple of months preparation for a
crash out, and thats it.
As for Sinn Fein, I get the feeling that after been caught on the hop by Brexit, they now
see a crash out as an opportunity. NI looks likely to suffer more than anywhere else if there
is a no-deal – there is hardly a business there that won't be devastated. But they are
caught between trying to show their soft face in the south and their hardliner face in the
North, and I think they are having difficulty deciding how to play it.
The British circus attracts interest and there is coverage on the motions and so on
treated as UK internal politics. May and the ultra-brexiteers get almost all the attention.
The only options mentioned are no deal and May's agreement.
" European diplomats in London watching the government's Brexit agony have conveyed a
mixture of despair, and almost ghoulish fascination, at the state of British politics, with
one saying it is as melodramatic as a telenovela, full of subplots, intrigue, tragedy and
betrayal
Although privately many diplomats would love Brexit to be reversed, and believe it could
mark a turning point against populism, there was also a wariness about the disruption of a
second referendum. One ambassador suggested the French realised that European parliamentary
election campaign of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, would be damaged by the sight of
furious British leave campaigners claiming they had been cheated of their democratic rights
by an arrogant elite who refused to listen: "What is happening in France is potentially
momentous. The social fabric is under threat, and this anger could spread across the
continent," the ambassador said, referring to the gilets jaunes protests ."
"... Apologies, but Neoliberalism is far from 'dead'. But of course it should never have given 'life'. However, if it were 'dead' why did Labor vote with the Coalition to ratify the ultra-Neoliberal TPP??? The TPP is the penultimate wet dream of all neoliberal multinational vulture corporations. Why???? Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) Under these rules, foreign investors can legally challenge host state regulations outside that country's courts. A wide range of policies can be challenged. ..."
Apologies, but Neoliberalism is far from 'dead'. But of course it should never have given
'life'. However, if it were 'dead' why did Labor vote with the Coalition to ratify the
ultra-Neoliberal TPP??? The TPP is the penultimate wet dream of all neoliberal multinational
vulture corporations. Why???? Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) Under these rules,
foreign investors can legally challenge host state regulations outside that country's courts.
A wide range of policies can be challenged.
Yeah! Philip Morris comes to mind. "The cost to taxpayers of the Australian government's
six-year legal battle with the tobacco giant Philip Morris over plain packaging laws can
finally be revealed, despite the government's efforts to keep the cost secret.
The commonwealth government spent nearly $40m defending its world-first plain packaging
laws against Philip Morris Asia, a tobacco multinational, according to freedom of information
documents.
Documents say the total figure is $38,984,942.97."
No-deal Brexit: Disruption at Dover 'could
last six months' BBC. I have trouble understanding why six months. The UK's customs IT
system won't be ready and there's no reason to think it will be ready even then. I could
see things getting less bad due to adaptations but "less bad" is not normal
The
Great Brexit Breakdown Wall Street Journal. Some parts I quibble with, but generally
good and includes useful historical detail.
"... I've come to believe that Trump's role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the
Congress and then does. I don't think he's capable. I don't think he's capable of sustained focus. I don't think he understands the
system. I don't think the Congress is on his side. I don't think his own agencies support him. He's not going to do that. ..."
"... I think Trump's role is to begin the conversation about what actually matters. We were not having any conversation about immigration
before Trump arrived in Washington. ..."
"... Trump asked basic questions like' "Why don't our borders work?" "Why should we sign a trade agreement and let the other side
cheat?" Or my favorite of all, "What's the point of NATO?" The point of NATO was to keep the Soviets from invading western Europe but
they haven't existed in 27 years, so what is the point? These are obvious questions that no one could answer. ..."
"... I mean let me just be clear. I'm not against an aristocratic system. I'm not against a ruling class. I think that hierarchies
are natural, people create them in every society. I just think the system that we have now the meritocracy, which is based really on
our education system, on a small number of colleges has produced a ruling class that doesn't have the self-awareness that you need to
be wise. ..."
"... it was only after the financial crisis of 08 that I noticed that something was really out of whack, because Washington didn't
really feel the crisis. ..."
"... If you leave Washington and drive to say Pittsburgh, which is a manufacturing town about three and a half hours to the west,
you drive through a series of little towns that are devastated. There are no car dealerships, there are no restaurants. There's nothing.
They have not recovered. I remember driving out there one day, maybe eight or nine years ago and thinking, boy, this is a disaster.
..."
"... That's kind of strange since we're the capital city in charge of making policy for everybody else... Massive inequality does
not work in a democracy... ..."
"... If you make above a certain income, or if you live in my neighborhood, you have zero physical contact with other Americans.
In other words, the elite in our country is physically separated in a way that's very unhealthy for a democracy, very unhealthy. ..."
"... The Democratic Party, which for 100 years was the party of average people is now the party of the rich. ..."
"... He served the purpose of bringing the middle class into the Republican Party, which had zero interest, no interest in representing
them at all. Trump is intuitive, he felt, he could smell that there was this large group of voters who had no one representing them
and he brought them to the Republican side, but the realignment is still ongoing. ..."
"... In other words, the Democratic Party used to represent the middle class, it no longer does, it now hates the middle class.
..."
"... I do think, going forward the Republican Party will wake up and realize these are our voters and we're going to represent them
whether we want it or not. ..."
"... I am deeply suspicious of foreign adventurism, voluntary wars, wars of self-defense are not controversial, I'm for them completely,
there's an invasion repellent. The idea that you would send 100,000 troops to a country to improve its political system is grotesque
to me. It would've been grotesque to them. ..."
"... The Vietnam War was horrifying to them because it was a voluntary war, waged for theoretical reasons, geostrategic reasons
which they rejected, and I do too. ..."
"... We can make autonomous choices about how we respond to market forces. People get crushed beneath its wheels. ..."
"... Capitalism drives change, innovation change, the old ways give way to new ways of doing things, and in the process of change
the weak get hurt always, this was true in industrialization 100 years ago and it's true in the digital revolution now. What's changed
is that nobody is standing up on behalf of the people who are being crushed by the change. ..."
"... In your book, you say they've vanishing but they seem to come back again. ..."
"... Have you ever seen this amount of discontent and aggression here in your lifetime? ..."
"... How close to a revolution is your country? ..."
"... The country is getting redder and bluer. ..."
"... Do you think that Europe will get in control of the migration? ..."
The Swiss are very suspicious of anybody who is boastful. That's why I have a question about Trump
I hate that about him. I hate that it's not my culture. I didn't grow up like that.
In your book you speak a lot about people who attack Trump, but you actually don't say very much about Trump's record.
That's true.
Do you think he has kept his promises? Has he achieved his goals?
No. He hasn't?
No. His chief promises were that he would build the wall, de-fund planned parenthood, and repeal Obamacare, and he hasn't done
any of those things. There are a lot of reasons for that, but since I finished writing the book, I've come to believe that Trump's
role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the Congress and then does. I don't think
he's capable. I don't think he's capable of sustained focus. I don't think he understands the system. I don't think the Congress
is on his side. I don't think his own agencies support him. He's not going to do that.
I think Trump's role is to begin the conversation about what actually matters. We were not having any conversation about immigration
before Trump arrived in Washington. People were bothered about it in different places in the country. It's a huge country, but
that was not a staple of political debate at all. Trump asked basic questions like' "Why don't our borders work?" "Why should
we sign a trade agreement and let the other side cheat?" Or my favorite of all, "What's the point of NATO?" The point of NATO was
to keep the Soviets from invading western Europe but they haven't existed in 27 years, so what is the point? These are obvious questions
that no one could answer.
Apart from asking these very important questions has he really achieved nothing?
Not much. Not much. Much less than he should have. I've come to believe he's not capable of it.
Why should he be not capable?
Because the legislative process in this country by design is highly complex, and it's designed to be complex as a way of diffusing
power, of course, because the people who framed our Constitution, founded our country, were worried about concentrations of power.
They balanced it among the three branches as you know and they made it very hard to make legislation. In order to do it you really
have to understand how it works and you have to be very focused on getting it done, and he knows very little about the legislative
process, hasn't learned anything, hasn't and surrounded himself with people that can get it done, hasn't done all the things you
need to do so. It's mostly his fault that he hasn't achieved those things. I'm not in charge of Trump.
The title of your book is "Ship of Fools". You write that an irresponsible elite has taken over America. Who is the biggest
fool?
I mean let me just be clear. I'm not against an aristocratic system. I'm not against a ruling class. I think that hierarchies
are natural, people create them in every society. I just think the system that we have now the meritocracy, which is based really
on our education system, on a small number of colleges has produced a ruling class that doesn't have the self-awareness that you
need to be wise. I'm not arguing for populism, actually. I'm arguing against populism. Populism is what you get when your leaders
fail. In a democracy, the population says this is terrible and they elect someone like Trump.
When did you first notice that this elite is getting out of touch with the people?
Well, just to be clear, I'm not writing this from the perspective of an outsider. I mean I've lived in this world my whole life.
Which world exactly?
The world of affluence and the high level of education and among-- I grew up in a town called La Jolla, California in the south.
It was a very affluent town and then I moved as a kid to Georgetown here in Washington. I've been here my whole life. I've always
lived around people who are wielding authority, around the ruling class, and it was only after the financial crisis of 08 that
I noticed that something was really out of whack, because Washington didn't really feel the crisis.
If you leave Washington and drive to say Pittsburgh, which is a manufacturing town about three and a half hours to the west,
you drive through a series of little towns that are devastated. There are no car dealerships, there are no restaurants. There's nothing.
They have not recovered. I remember driving out there one day, maybe eight or nine years ago and thinking, boy, this is a disaster.
Rural America, America outside three or four cities is really falling apart. I thought if you're running the country, you should
have a sense of that. I remember thinking to myself, nobody I know has any idea that this is happening an hour away. That's kind
of strange since we're the capital city in charge of making policy for everybody else... Massive inequality does not work in a democracy...
You become Venezuela.
You write about vanishing middle class. When you were born over 60 % of Americans ranked middle class. Why and when did
it disappear?
If you make above a certain income, or if you live in my neighborhood, you have zero physical contact with other Americans.
In other words, the elite in our country is physically separated in a way that's very unhealthy for a democracy, very unhealthy.
The Democratic Party is out of touch with the working class.
Well, that's the remarkable thing. For 100 years the Democratic Party represented wage earners, working people, normal people,
middle class people, then somewhere around-- In precisely peg it to Clinton's second term in the tech boom in the Bay Area in Francisco
and Silicon Valley, the Democratic Party reoriented and became the party of technology, of large corporations, and of the rich. You've
really seen that change in the last 20 years where in the top 10 richest zip codes in the United States, 9 of them in the last election
just went for Democrats. Out of the top 50, 42 went for Democrats. The Democratic Party, which for 100 years was the party of
average people is now the party of the rich.
Donald Trump, who is often seen as this world-changing figure is actually a symptom of something that precedes him that I sometimes
wonder if he even understands which is this realignment. He served the purpose of bringing the middle class into the Republican
Party, which had zero interest, no interest in representing them at all. Trump is intuitive, he felt, he could smell that there was
this large group of voters who had no one representing them and he brought them to the Republican side, but the realignment is still
ongoing.
In other words, the Democratic Party used to represent the middle class, it no longer does, it now hates the middle class.
The Republican Party which has never represented the middle class doesn't want to. That is the source of really all the confusion
and the tension that you're seeing now. I do think, going forward the Republican Party will wake up and realize these are our
voters and we're going to represent them whether we want it or not.
They have to, or they will lose.
They have to, or they will die. Yes.
You're writing in an almost nostalgic tone about the old liberals? People like Miss Raymond, your first-class teacher. You
describe her wonderfully in the book. You say that they have vanished. What happened?
I find myself in deep sympathy with a lot of the aims of 1970s liberals. I believe in free speech, and I instinctively side with
the individual against the group. I think that the individual matters, I am deeply suspicious of foreign adventurism, voluntary
wars, wars of self-defense are not controversial, I'm for them completely, there's an invasion repellent. The idea that you would
send 100,000 troops to a country to improve its political system is grotesque to me. It would've been grotesque to them.
The Vietnam War was horrifying to them because it was a voluntary war, waged for theoretical reasons, geostrategic reasons
which they rejected, and I do too. They were also suspicious of market capitalism. They thought that somebody needed to push
back against the forces of the market, not necessarily because capitalism was bad, capitalism is not bad, it's also not a religion.
We don't have to follow it blindly. We can make autonomous choices about how we respond to market forces. People get crushed
beneath its wheels.
Capitalism drives change, innovation change, the old ways give way to new ways of doing things, and in the process of change
the weak get hurt always, this was true in industrialization 100 years ago and it's true in the digital revolution now. What's changed
is that nobody is standing up on behalf of the people who are being crushed by the change.
Is that really so? Look at the grassroot movement on the left: Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and her socialist group. It is probably
a 100 years ago when Americans last saw a socialist movement of substance emerging?
Yes. You're absolutely right. That's the future.
In your book, you say they've vanishing but they seem to come back again.
Well, you're absolutely right. You're incisive correct to say that the last time we saw this was 100 years ago, which was another
pivot point in our economic and social history. Where, after 10,000 years of living in an Agrarian society, people moved to the cities
to work in factories and that upended the social order completely. With that came huge political change and a massive reaction.
In the United States and in Western Europe labor unions moderated the forces of change and allowed us to preserve capitalism in
the form that we see it now... You're seeing the exact same dynamic play out today, we have another, as I said, economic revolution,
the digital age, which is changing how people work, how they make money, how families are structured. There is a huge reaction to
that, of course, because there always is, because normal people can't handle change at this pace. People are once again crying out
for some help. They feel threatened by the change. What bothers me is that there is no large group of sensible people asking, how
can we buffer this change? How can we restrain it just enough, not to stop it, but to keep people from overreacting and becoming
radical?
Talking about radical. Recently, a radical left-wing group have threatened to storm your Washington home. How is your wife?
How is your family?
They are fine, they're pretty tough. They're rattled.
The Antifa-mob came right to the door of your home?
Yes, they did and threatened my wife.
Which must have been absolutely scary?
Yes, it was. My wife was born in the city, my four children were born here, we're not moving.
Your attackers have a goal, they're trying to silence you.
Of course. I would never, of course, that's a cornerstone of Western civilization is expression and freedom of conscience. You
can tell me how to behave, you can force me not to sleep or take my clothes off in public, that's fine. Every society has the right
to control behavior. But no one has the right to control what you believe. You can't control my conscience, that's mine alone. Only
totalitarian movements do that, and that's what they're attempting. Of course, I would die first I'm never going to submit to that.
Have you ever seen this amount of discontent and aggression here in your lifetime?
No, I've never seen anything like this. What's so striking is that [chuckles] this is really... The radicalism is not on behalf
of people who are actually suffering, fellow Americans who are suffering, on behalf of the 70,000 people who died of drug ODs last
year, or on behalf of the people displaced by automation in GM, or whatever, on behalf of those dying American low class, it's really
on behalf of theoretical goals.
They're saying that I [Tucker Carlson] am saying naughty things that shouldn't be allowed to be expressed in public. Basically,
it's a totalitarian movement. Totally unhelpful. I would say childish. What they're really doing is defending the current order.
They're the shock troops of the elites actually. Actually, what you're seeing is something amazing, you're seeing for the first time
in history a revolution being waged against the working class. When does that happen?
Your way of debating is very tough. You're sitting there, hammering your guests. Sometimes we have a bit of a problem to
understand that. For us it's a bit disturbing.
Of course, it is. It's disturbing for me too!
How tough do you need to be nowadays to have an audience?
Less, I think than sometimes we put into it or I put into it. I'm actually, in my normal life, I think a pretty gentle person.
I've never had a yelling fight with my wife in 34 years. I mean, I've never yelled at my children. No, I don't ever.
Never?
Not one time. No, it's not how I communicate. I never want to be impolite. I have been impolite. I've lost my temper a couple
times, but I don't want to. I don't like that. I believe in civility.
... ... ...
How close to a revolution is your country?
By revolution, let me be clear, I don't think that we're anywhere near an outbreak of civil war, armed violence between two sides
for a bunch of different reasons... Testosterone levels are so low and marijuana use is so high that I think the population is probably
too ... What you don't have, prerequisite fall revolution, violent revolution, is a large group of young people who are comfortable
with violence and we don't have that. Maybe that will change. I hope it doesn't. I don't want violence for violence. I appall violence,
but I just don't see that happening. What I see happening most likely is a kind of gradual separation of the states.
If you look at the polling on the subject, classically, traditionally, Americans had antique racial attitudes. If you say, "Would
you be okay with your daughter marrying outside her race?" Most Americans, if they're being honest, would say, "no, I'm not okay
with that. I'm not for that." Now the polling shows people are much more comfortable with a child marrying someone of a different
race than they are marrying someone of a different political persuasion.
"I'd rather my daughter married someone who's Hispanic than liberal", someone might say. That is one measure. There are many measures,
but that's one measure of how politically divided we are and I just think that over time, people will self-segregate. It's a continental
country. It's a very large piece of land and you could see where certain states just become very, very different. Like if you're
Conservative, are you really going to live in California in 10 years? Probably not.
Orange County is now purely Democrat.
That's exactly right. You're going to move and if you're very liberal, are you really going to want to live in Idaho? Probably
not.
The country is getting redder and bluer.
Exactly.
This revolution you are warning about - What needs to be done to stop it from happening?
Just the only thing you can do in a democracy which is address the legitimate concerns of the population and think more critically
and be more wise in your decision making. Get a handle on technology. Technology is the driver of the change, so sweep aside the
politics, the fundamental fact about people is they can't metabolize change at this pace because as an evolutionary matter, they're
not designed to, they're not. If you asked your average old person what's the most upsetting thing about being old? You expect them
to say, "Well, my friends are dead". But that's not what they say. Or "I have to go to the bathroom six times a night". That's not
what they say.
You know what they say? "Things are too different. This is not the country I grew up in. I don't recognize this." All people hate
that. It doesn't mean you're a bigot, it means you're human. Unless you want things to fall apart, become so volatile that you can't
have a working economy, you need to get a handle on the pace of change. You have to slow it down.
How important is migration in terms of change?
It's central because nothing changes the society more quickly or more permanently than bringing in a whole new population and
that's not an attack on anybody. There are lots of populations- there are lots of immigrants who are much more impressive than I
am. I have no doubt about that. I'm not attacking immigrants. I'm merely saying that the effect on the people who already live here
is real and they're not bigots for feeling that way.
You come from an ancient country with a series of ancient cultures within it and if you woke up one morning and everyone was speaking
Amharic and you didn't recognize any of your surroundings, that would be deeply upsetting to you.
What you saying, it's necessary to slow it down, control it?
You have to slow it down. Look at the Chinese. I abhor, I despise the Chinese government. However, I'm willing to acknowledge
wise behavior when I see it. The Chinese would never accept this pace of demographic change not simply because they're racist, though
of course, they are, but that's not the point. The point is because they don't want their society to fall apart because they're in
charge of it.
The childlike faith that we have in America, and America is the worst at this, that all change is good and that progress is inevitable
and if something is new and fresh and more expensive, it's got to be better.
It is kind of refreshing for Europeans that even Hillary Clinton tells Europeans, "You have got to stop this. You've got
to get control of migration or you disintegrate."
John Kerry said the same thing, amazingly. They're telling the truth.
Do you think Europe is going to be able to get in control of that? We have 28 countries in the EU. And Switzerland is not
a member?
So smart, so smart... You know why? Because they're mountain people. Love them. You know why? Because they're suspicious, that's
what I like about them.
[laughter]
Do you think that Europe will get in control of the migration?
The EU has been doomed since the first day because it's inconsistent with human nature. The reason we have nation states is because
people wanted them, it's organic. A nation-state is just a larger tribe and it's organized along lines that make sense. They evolved
over thousands of years. To ignore it and destroy it because you think that you've got a better idea, is insane!
[And with that, our interview concludes. It has already run far past the allotted 40 minutes. I offer to take Carlson, who seems
to be very passionate about Switzerland, on a ski run in our Alps soon. Perhaps a smoke in one of the outdoor saunas I tell him smell
like rotten eggs. Ambassador Grenell is on the phone line patiently waiting.]
It has become all too easy for democracy to be turned on its head and popular nationalist
mandates, referenda and elections negated via instant political hypocrisy by leaders who show
their true colours only after the public vote. So it has been within the two-and-a-half year
unraveling of the UK Brexit referendum of 2016 that saw the subsequent negotiations now provide
the Brexit voter with only three possibilities. All are a loss for Britain.
One possibility, Brexit, is the result of Prime Minister, Theresa May's negotiations- the
"deal"- and currently exists in name only. Like the PM herself, the original concept of Brexit
may soon lie in the dust of an upcoming UK Parliament floor vote in exactly the same manner as
the failed attempt by the Greeks barely three years ago. One must remember that Greece on June
27, 2015 once voted to leave the EU as well and to renegotiate its EU existence as well in
their own "Grexit" referendum. Thanks to their own set of underhanded and treasonous
politicians, this did not go well for Greece. Looking at the Greek result, and understanding
divisive UK Conservative Party control that exists in the hearts of PMs on both sides of the
House of Commons, this new parliamentary vote is not looking good for Britain. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek! "deal" -- would thus reveal the life-long scars of their true
national allegiance gnawed into their backs by the lust of their masters in Brussels. Brexit:
Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
Ironically, like a cluster bomb of white phosphorous over a Syrian village, Cameron's Brexit
vote blew up spectacularly in his face. Two decades of ongoing political submission to the EU
by the Cons and "new" labour had them arrogantly misreading the minds of the UK
voter.
So on that incredible night, it happened. Prime Minister David Cameron the Cons New Labour
The Lib- Dems and even the UK Labour Party itself, were shocked to their core when the
unthinkable nightmare that could never happen, did happen . Brexit had passed by popular
vote!
David Cameron has been in hiding ever since.
After Brexit passed the same set of naïve UK voters assumed, strangely, that Brexit
would be finalized in their national interest as advertised. This belief had failed to
read
Article 50 - the provisos for leaving the EU- since, as much as it was mentioned, it was
very rarely linked or referenced by a quotation in any of the media punditry. However, an
article published four days after the night Brexit passed,
" A Brexit Lesson In Greek: Hopes and Votes Dashed on Parliamentary Floors," provided
anyone thus reading Article 50, which is only eight pages long and double-spaced, the info to
see clearly that this never before used EU by-law would be the only route to a UK exit.
Further, Article 50 showed that Brussels would control the outcome of exit negotiations along
with the other twenty-seven member nations and that effectively Ms May and her Tories
would be playing this game using the EU's ball and rules, while going one-on-twenty-seven
during the negotiations.
In the aftermath of Brexit, the real game began in earnest. The stakes: bigger than
ever.
Forgotten are the hypocritical defections of political expediency that saw Boris Johnson and
then Home Secretary Theresa May who were, until that very moment, both vociferously and very
publicly against the intent of Brexit. Suddenly they claimed to be pro- Brexit in their quest
to sleep in Cameron's now vacant bed at No. 10 Downing Street. Boris strategically dropped out
to hopefully see, Ms May, fall on her sword- a bit sooner. Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by
Brett Redmayne-Titley - The Unz Review
So, the plucky PM was left to convince the UK public, daily, as the negotiations moved on,
that "Brexit means Brexit!" A UK media that is as pro-EU as their PM chimed in to help
her sell distortions of proffered success at the negotiating table, while the rise of "old"
Labour, directed by Jeremy Corbyn, exposed her "soft" Brexit negotiations for the
litany of failures that ultimately equaled the "deal" that was strangely still called
"Brexit."
Too few, however, examined this reality once these political Chameleons changed their
colours just as soon as the very first results shockingly came in from Manchester in the wee
hours of the morning on that seemingly hopeful night so long ago: June 23, 2016. For thus would
begin a quiet, years-long defection of many more MPs than merely these two opportunists.
What the British people also failed to realize was that they and their Brexit victory would
also be faced with additional adversaries beyond the EU members: those from within their own
government. From newly appointed PM May to Boris Johnson, from the Conservative Party to the
New Labour sellouts within the Labour Party and the Friends of Israel , the
quiet internal political movement against Brexit began. As the House of Lords picked up their
phones, too, for very quiet private chats within House of Commons, their minions in the British
press began their work as well.
Brexit: Theresa May Goes Greek!, by Brett Redmayne-Titley -
The Unz Review
This article by Brett Redmayne is certainly right re the horrific sell-out by the Greek
government of Tsipras the other year, that has left the Greek citizenry in enduring political
despair the betrayal of Greek voters indeed a model for UK betrayal of Brexit voters
But Redmayne is likely very mistaken in the adulation of Jeremy Corbyn as the 'genuine
real deal' for British people
Ample evidence points to Corbyn as Trojan horse sell-out, as covered by UK researcher
Aangirfan on her blogs, the most recent of which was just vapourised by Google in their
censorship insanity
Jeremy Corbyn was a childhood neighbour of the Rothschilds in Wiltshire; with Jeremy's
father David Corbyn working for ultra-powerful Victor Rothschild on secret UK gov scientific
projects during World War 2
Jeremy Corbyn is tied to child violation scandals & child-crime convicted individuals
including Corbyn's Constituency Agent; Corbyn tragically ignoring multiple earnest complaints
from child abuse victims & whistleblowers over years, whilst "child abuse rings were
operating within all 12 of the borough's children's homes" in Corbyn's district not very
decent of him
And of course Corbyn significantly cucked to the Israel lobby in their demands for purge
of the Labour party alleged 'anti-semites'
The Trojan Horse 'fake opposition', or fake 'advocate for the people', is a very classic
game of the Powers That Be, and sadly Corbyn is likely yet one more fake 'hero'
My theory is, give "capitalism" and financial interests enough time, they will consume any
democracy. Meaning: the wealth flows upwards, giving the top class opportunity to influence
politics and the media, further improving their situation v.s. the rest, resulting in ever
stronger position – until they hold all the power. Controlling the media and therefore
the narrative, capable to destroy any and all opposition. Ministers and members of
parliaments, most bought and paid for one way or the other. Thankfully, the 1% or rather the
0.1% don't always agree so the picture can be a bit blurred.
You can guess what country inspired this "theory" of mine. The second on the list is
actually the U.K. If a real socialist becomes the prime minister of the U.K. I will be very
surprised. But Brexit is a black swan like they say in the financial sector, and they tend to
disrupt even the best of theories. Perhaps Corbin is genuine and will become prime minister!
I am not holding my breath.
However, if he is a real socialist like the article claims. And he becomes prime minister
of the U.K the situation will get really interesting. Not only from the EU side but more
importantly from U.K. best friend – the U.S. Uncle Sam will not be happy about this
development and doesn't hesitate to crush "bad ideas" he doesn't like.
Case in point – Ireland's financial crisis in 2009;
After massive expansion and spectacular housing bubble the Irish banks were in deep
trouble early into the crisis. The EU, ECB and the IMF (troika?) met with the Irish
government to discuss solutions. From memory – the question was how to save the Irish
banks? They were close to agreement that bondholders and even lenders to the Irish banks
should take a "haircut" and the debt load should be cut down to manageable levels so the
banks could survive (perhaps Michael Hudson style if you will). One short phone call from
the U.S Secretary of the treasury then – Timothy Geithner – to the troika-Irish
meeting ended these plans. He said: there will be no haircut! That was the end of it.
Ireland survived but it's reasonable to assume this "guideline" paved the road for the
Greece debacle.
I believe Mr. Geithner spoke on behalf of the financial power controlling – more or
less-our hemisphere. So if the good old socialist Corbin comes to power in the U.K. and
intends to really change something and thereby set examples for other nations – he is
taking this power head on. I think in case of "no deal" the U.K. will have it's back against
the wall and it's bargaining position against the EU will depend a LOT on U.S. response. With
socialist in power there will be no meaningful support from the U.S. the powers that be will
to their best to destroy Corbin as soon as possible.
My right wing friends can't understand the biggest issue of our times is class war. This
article mentions the "Panama papers" where great many corporations and wealthy individuals
(even politicians) in my country were exposed. They run their profits through offshore tax
havens while using public infrastructure (paid for by taxpayers) to make their money. It's
estimated that wealth amounting to 1,5 times our GDP is stored in these accounts!
There is absolutely no way to get it through my right wing friends thick skull that
off-shore accounts are tax frauds. Resulting in they paying higher taxes off their wages
because the big corporations and the rich don't pay anything. Nope. They simply hate taxes
(even if they get plenty back in services) and therefore all taxes are bad. Ergo tax evasions
by the 1% are fine – socialism or immigrants must be the root of our problems.
MIGA!
Come to think of it – few of them would survive the "law of the jungle" they so much
desire. And none of them would survive the "law of the jungle" if the rules are stacked
against them. Still, all their political energy is aimed against the ideas and people that
struggle against such reality.
I give up – I will never understand the right. No more than the pure bread
communist. Hopeless ideas!
" This is because the deal has a provision that would still keep the UK in the EU Customs
Union (the system setting common trade rules for all EU members) indefinitely. This is an
outrageous inclusion and betrayal of a real Brexit by Ms May since this one topic was the
most contentious in the debate during the ongoing negotiations because the Customs Union is
the tie to the EU that the original Brexit vote specifically sought to terminate. "
Here I stopped reading, maybe later more.
Nonsense.
What USA MSM told in the USA about what ordinary British people said, those who wanted to
leave the EU, I do not know, one of the most often heard reasons was immigration, especially
from E European countries, the EU 'free movement of people'.
"Real' Britons refusing to live in Poland.
EP member Verhofstadt so desperate that he asked on CNN help by Trump to keep this 'one of
the four EU freedoms'.
This free movement of course was meant to destroy the nation states
What Boris Johnson said, many things he said were true, stupid EU interference for example
with products made in Britain, for the home market, (he mentioned forty labels in one piece
of clothing), no opportunity to seek trade without EU interference.
There was irritation about EU interference 'they even make rules about vacuum cleaners', and,
already long ago, closure, EU rules, of village petrol pumps that had been there since the
first cars appeared in Britain, too dangerous.
In France nonsensical EU rules are simply ignored, such as countryside private sewer
installations.
But the idea that GB could leave, even without Brussels obstruction, the customs union,
just politicians, and other nitwits in economy, could have such ideas.
Figures are just in my head, too lazy to check.
But British export to what remains of the EU, some € 60 billion, French export to GB,
same order of magnitude, German export to GB, far over 100 billion.
Did anyone imagine that Merkel could afford closing down a not negligible part of Bayern car
industry, at he same time Bayern being the Land most opposed to Merkel, immigration ?
This Brexit in my view is just the beginning of the end of the illusion EU falling
apart.
In politics anything is connected with anything.
Britons, again in my opinion, voted to leave because of immigration, inside EU
immigration.
What GB will do with Marrakech, I do not know.
Marrakech reminds me of many measures that were ready to be implemented when the reason to
make these measures no longer existed.
Such as Dutch job guarantees when enterprises merged, these became law when when the merger
idiocy was over.
The negative aspects of immigration now are clear to many in the countries with the imagined
flesh pots, one way or another authorities will be obliged to stop immigration, but at that
very moment migration rules, not legally binding, are presented.
As a Belgian political commentator said on Belgian tv 'no communication is possible
between French politicians and French yellow coat demonstrators, they live in completely
different worlds'.
These different worlds began, to pinpoint a year, in 2005, when the negative referenda about
the EU were ignored. As Farrage reminded after the Brexit referendum, in EP, you said 'they
do not know what they're doing'
But now Macron and his cronies do not know what to do, now that police sympathises with
yellow coat demonstrators.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance
cultures manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
@Digital
Samizdat Corbyn, in my opinion one of the many not too bright socialists, who are caught
in their own ideological prison: worldwide socialism is globalisation, globalisation took
power away from politicians, and gave it to multinationals and banks.
@niceland The
expression class war is often used without realising what the issue is, same with tax
evasion.
The rich of course consume more, however, there is a limit to what one can consume, it takes
time to squander money.
So the end of the class war may make the rich poor, but alas the poor hardly richer.
About tax evasion, some economist, do not remember his name, did not read the article
attentively, analysed wealth in the world, and concluded that eight % of this wealth had
originated in evading taxes.
Over what period this evasion had taken place, do not remember this economist had reached a
conclusion, but anyone understands that ending tax evasion will not make all poor rich.
There is quite another aspect of class war, evading taxes, wealth inequality, that is
quite worrying: the political power money can yield.
Soros is at war with Hungary, his Open University must leave Hungary.
USA MSM furious, some basic human right, or rights, have been violated, many in Brussels
furious, the 226 Soros followers among them, I suppose.
But since when is it allowed, legally and/or morally, to try to change the culture of a
country, in this case by a foreigner, just by pumping money into a country ?
Soros advertises himself as a philantropist, the Hungarian majority sees him as some kind of
imperialist, I suppose.
For me THE interesting question remains 'how was it possible that the Renaissance cultures
manoevred themselves into the present mess ?'.
Well , I am reading " The occult renaissance church of Rome " by Michael Hoffman ,
Independent History and research . Coeur d`Alene , Idaho . http://www.RevisionistHistory.org
I saw about this book in this Unz web .
I used to think than the rot started with protestantism , but Hoffman says it started with
catholic Renaissance in Rome itself in the XV century , the Medici , the Popes , usury
This whole affair illustrates beautifully the real purpose of the sham laughingly known as
"representative democracy," namely, not to "empower" the public but to deprive it of
its power.
With modern means of communication, direct democracy would be technically feasible even in
large countries. Nevertheless, practically all "democratic" countries continue to delegate
all legislative powers to elected "representatives." These are nothing more than consenting
hostages of those with the real power, who control and at the same time hide behind those
"representatives." The more this becomes obvious, the lower the calibre of the people willing
to be used in this manner – hence, the current crop of mental gnomes and opportunist
shills in European politics.
I would only shout this rambling ignoramus a beer in the pub to stop his mouth for a while.
Some of his egregious errors have been noted. and Greece, anyway, is an irrelevance to the
critical decisions on Brexit.
Once Article 50 was invoked the game was over. All the trump cards were on the EU side.
Now we know that, even assuming Britain could muster a competent team to plan and negotiate
for Brexit that all the work of proving up the case and negotiating or preparing the ground
has to be done over years leading up to the triggering of Article 50. And that's assuming
that recent events leave you believing that the once great Britain is fit to be a sovereign
nation without adult supervision.
As it is one has to hope that Britain will not be constrained by the total humbug which
says that a 51 per cent vote of those choosing to vote in that very un British thing, a
referendum, is some sort of reason for not giving effect to a more up to date and better
informed view.
@Digital
Samizdat Hypothesis: The British masses would fare better without a privatized
government.
"Corbyn may prove to be real .. .. old-time Labour platform [leadership, capable to]..
return [political, social and financial] control back to the hands of the UK worker".. [but
the privateers will use the government itself and mass media to defeat such platforms and to
suppress labor with new laws and domestic armed warfare]. Why would a member of the British
masses allow [the Oligarch elite and the[ir] powerful business and foreign political
interests restrain democracy and waste the victims of privately owned automation revolution?
.. ..
[Corbyn's Labour platform challenges ] privatized capitalist because the PCs use the
British government to keep imprisoned in propaganda and suppressed in opportunity, the
masses. The privateers made wealthy by their monopolies, are using their resources to
maintain rule making and enforcement control (via the government) over the masses; such
privateers have looted the government, and taken by privatization a vast array of economic
monopolies that once belonged to the government. If the British government survives, the
Privateers (monopoly thieves) will continue to use the government to replace humanity, in
favor of corporate owned Robots and super capable algorithms.
Corbyn's threat to use government to represent the masses and to suppress or reduce
asymmetric power and wealth, and to provide sufficient for everyone extends to, and alerts
the masses in every capitalist dominated place in the world. He (Corbyn) is a very dangerous
man, so too was Jesus Christ."
There is a similar call in France, but it is not yet so well led.
Every working Dutch person is "owed" 50k euro from the bailout of Greece, not that Greece
will ever pay this back, and not as if Greece ever really got the money as it just went
straight to northern European banks to bail them out. Then we have the fiscal policy creating
more money by the day to stimulate the economy, which also doesn't reach the countries or
people just the banks. Then we have the flirting with East-European mobsters to pull them in
the EU sphere corrupting top EU bureaucrats. Then we have all of south Europe being extremely
unstable, including France, both its populations and its economy.
It's sad to see the British government doesn't see the disaster ahead, any price would be
cheaper then future forced EU integration. And especially at this point, the EU is so
unstable, that they can't go to war on the UK without also committing A kamikaze attack.
@Brabantian
Thank you for your comment and addition to my evaluation of Corbyn. I do agree with you that
Corbyn has yet to be tested for sincerity and effectiveness as PM, but he will likely get his
chance and only then will we and the Brits find out for sure. The main point I was hoping to
make was that: due to the perceived threat of Labour socialist reform under Corbyn, he has
been an ulterior motive in the negotiations and another reason that the EU wants PM May to
get her deal passed. Yes, I too am watching Corbyn with jaundiced optimism. Thank you.
I agree Jilles, and with many other of the commenters.
Read enough to see that the article has many errors of fact and perception. It is bad
enough to suspect *propaganda* , but Brett is clearly not at that level.
An important point that you hint at is that the Brits were violently and manipulatively
forced to accept mass immigration for many years.
Yet strangely, to say anything about it only became acceptable when some numbers of the
immigrants were fellow Europeans from within the EU, and most having some compatibility with
existing ethnicity and previous culture.
Even people living far away notice such forced false consciousness.
As for Corbyn, he is nothing like the old left of old Labour. He tries to convey that
image, it is a lie.
He may not be Blairite-Zio New Labour, and received some influence from the more heavily
Marxist old Labour figures, but he is very much a creature of the post-worst-of-1968 and
dirty hippy new left, Frankfurt School and all that crap, doubt that he has actually read
much of it, but he has internalised it through his formal and political education.
By the way, the best translation of the name of North Korea's ruling party is 'Labour
Party'. While it is a true fact, I intend nothing from it but a small laugh.
"... Everything Flynn had to say implicated Obama, Clapper & Brennan but the corrupt cabal isn't subject to the laws of unwashed inbreds like you and I and the other 320 million Americans (including those who THINK they're part of the club because they virtue signal so well). ..."
You realize 2 years of Flynn under Mueller's microscope yielded nothing? And the fact he's
facing sentencing means he's not going to be called as a witness to anything.
Everything Flynn had to say implicated Obama, Clapper & Brennan but the corrupt cabal
isn't subject to the laws of unwashed inbreds like you and I and the other 320 million
Americans (including those who THINK they're part of the club because they virtue signal so
well).
Says Summer Sausage who was of course not in the room. You think you know stuff? You know
stuff from the koolaide you've swallowed for the past 20 years...
The author is tried to deceive: Flynn lobbed Russians on behave of Israel.
Muller dirty trick with Flynn (entrapment during the FBI interview) will eventually backfire
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller's memo noted that federal investigators' curiosity about Flynn's role in the presidential transition seemed to have been sparked by a Washington Post account of a conversation he had with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in December 2016 ..."
"... But the meat of what should worry Team Trump is in Mueller's disclosure that Flynn has provided firsthand information about interactions between the transition team and Russian government officials -- including, as was already known, several conversations with Kislyak in December 2016. Those included a discussion about lifting economic sanctions the Obama administration had imposed on Russia and about a separate matter involving a United Nations resolution on Israel. ..."
All of that, plus Flynn's "substantial assistance," early cooperation, and acceptance of "responsibility for his unlawful conduct,"
led Muller's team to ask the court to grant Flynn a lenient sentence that doesn't include prison time, according to
a highly anticipated sentencing memo the special counsel's office filed Tuesday night.
And there wasn't much more than that in 13 concise and heavily redacted pages that let down anyone expecting the document to be
another public narrative fleshing out lots of fresh detail about Mueller's investigation. Still, the filing, and some new details
in it, should give pause to members of Trump's inner circle -- especially the president's son-in-law and senior White House adviser,
Jared Kushner.
Mueller's memo noted that federal investigators' curiosity about Flynn's role in the presidential transition seemed to have
been sparked by a Washington Post account of a conversation he had with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in December
2016 . The filing also detailed a series of lies Flynn told about his contacts with and work for the Turkish government while
serving in the Trump campaign. (Given that Trump and a pair of his advisers had been pursuing
a real estate deal in Moscow during the first half of 2016, Flynn might mistakenly have seen wearing two hats as noncontroversial.)
But the meat of what should worry Team Trump is in Mueller's disclosure that Flynn has provided firsthand information about
interactions between the transition team and Russian government officials -- including, as was already known, several conversations
with Kislyak in December 2016. Those included a discussion about lifting economic sanctions the Obama administration had imposed
on Russia and about a separate matter involving a United Nations resolution on Israel.
Flynn lied to federal agents who questioned him about those chats on Jan. 24, 2017, and that was a crime (as, possibly, were his
efforts as a private citizen to meddle with a sitting government's foreign policy). The former general
acknowledged lying ,
pleaded guilty a year ago, and
then began cooperating with Mueller's
probe.
The timeline around Flynn's conversations
is crucial because it shows what's still in play for the president and Kushner -- and why Mueller may have been content to lock
in a cooperation agreement that carried relatively light penalties, as well as why Flynn's assistance seems to have subsequently
pleased the veteran prosecutor so much.
Kushner's actions are also interesting because the Federal Bureau of Investigation has examined
his
own communications with Kislyak -- and Kushner reportedly encouraged Trump to fire his FBI director,
James Comey , in the
spring of 2017, when Comey was still in the early stages of digging into the Trump-Russia connection.
Comey, and his successor, Mueller, have been focused on possible favor-trading between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. We
know that Russian hackers directed by Russian intelligence operatives penetrated Democrat computer servers in 2016 and gave that
information and email haul to WikiLeaks to disseminate as part of an effort to undermine Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. Trump
was also pursuing that
business deal in Moscow in 2016 and had other projects over the years
with a Russian presence . What might the Kremlin have been expecting in return? A promise to lift U.S. economic sanctions?
Kushner also had personal financial issues weighing on his mind at the time. He had spent much of 2016 trying to bail out his
family from his ill-considered and pricey purchase of a Manhattan skyscraper,
666 Fifth
Avenue .
After a meeting in Trump Tower with Kislyak on Dec. 1, 2016, which Flynn and Kushner
attended together ,
the ambassador arranged another gathering on Dec. 13 for Kushner and a
senior Russian
banker with Kremlin ties, Sergei Gorkov. The White House has
said that meeting was
innocent and part of Kushner's diplomatic duties. In a
statement
following his testimony before Congress in the summer of 2017, Kushner said that his interactions with Flynn and Kislyak on Dec.
1 only involved a discussion of Syria policy, not economic sanctions. He said that his discussion with Gorkov on Dec. 13 lasted less
than 30 minutes and only involved an exchange of pleasantries and hopes for better U.S.-Russian relations -- and didn't include any
discussion of recruiting Russians as lenders or investors in the Kushner family's
real estate business .
Kislyak enjoyed continued lobbying from the White House after his meetings with Kushner. On Dec. 22, Flynn asked Kislyak to delay
a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for building settlements in Palestinian territory. Flynn later told the FBI that
he didn't ask Kislyak to do that, which wasn't true.
Court documents filed last year
said that a "very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team" directed Flynn to make an overture to Kislyak about the sanctions
vote. According to reporting from my
Bloomberg Opinion colleague Eli Lake and
NBC News , Kushner was that "senior member."
Bloomberg News reported that former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus also pushed Flynn to lobby Kislyak on the
U.N. vote. (Kushner didn't discuss pressing Flynn to contact Kislyak in his statement last summer and instead noted how infrequent
his direct interactions were.)
Kushner's role in these events isn't discussed in Mueller's sentencing memo for Flynn. The absence of greater detail might cause
Kushner to worry: If Flynn offered federal authorities a different version of events than Kushner -- and Flynn's version is buttressed
by documentation or federal electronic surveillance of the former general -- then the president's son-in-law may have to start scrambling
(a possibility
I flagged
when Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017).
Other portions of the 2016 and early 2017 timelines still matter, too.
On Dec. 28, less than a week after Flynn called Kislyak about the U.N. vote, the ambassador contacted Flynn, according to court
documents. The Obama administration had just imposed economic sanctions on Russia because of the Kremlin's effort to sabotage the
2016 election. Kislyak apparently told Flynn that Russia would retaliate because Flynn asked him to "moderate" Russia's response.
Flynn
reportedly discussed these conversations with a former Trump adviser, K.T. McFarland, on Dec. 29.
In the weeks that followed, Sally Yates, then acting U.S. attorney general, warned the Trump administration about Flynn's duplicity
and said he was a national security threat. She was fired days after that for refusing to enforce Trump's executive order seeking
to ban immigration from seven Islamic nations. The White House forced Flynn out in February of last year, and Trump fired Comey three
months later. The president subsequently began using "witch hunt" to describe the investigation that Mueller inherited from Comey.
Since then, as the White House and Trump have surely absorbed and as Flynn's sentencing memo reinforces, Mueller's hunt has now
ensnared a number of witches.
When people who voted for Obama realized the Obama is a fraud with strong CIA connections it
was too late...
When people who voted for Trump realized that Trump was a fraud with strong Israeli
connections it was too late.
Notable quotes:
"... Nor does the caravan 'fix' or even illuminate decades of US abuses in Central and South America. It simply gives Trump an opportunity to grandstand and urge his voters to go to the polls. ..."
...And it seems likely, if not certain, that the caravan is a political stunt that will
end in disappointment for the caravan migrants. So I fail to see why you are so angry Debs.
Our discussion doesn't ignore the realities. Nor does the caravan 'fix' or even
illuminate decades of US abuses in Central and South America. It simply gives Trump an
opportunity to grandstand and urge his voters to go to the polls.
We are being played by an establishment that wants to move the country to the right. MAGA!
is a bi-partisan effort fueled by the challenge from China and Russia. This is clear from
Democratic Party priorities and actions as well as what they don't say or do.
"... Trump has succeeded in implementing some of his campaign ideas and not all of them are 100% evil or wrongheaded. He has shaken the long term calcification of the US foreign and trade policy, has introduced tariffs especially to combat clearly unfair Chinese trade practices while demanding European and Asian allies pay more for their defense of empire. ..."
"... As b stated recently, Trump is an astute salesman (unfortunately, that is all he is) but what is left unmentioned is that he is of the sales school that is totally unmoored for any sense of ethical, moral or legal responsibility. ..."
"... The US political system was invested with an ability to self-correct, or self-police through separation of powers within the tripartite political system. It is hardly news this system is about dead, starting not with Trump of course, but now reaching its absolute low point under his rule and the acquiescence of the spineless GOP. ..."
That is, he started off on the wrong foot. Campaigning as a populist who eschewed accepted
mainstream "progressive" and "conservative" political positions, he completely cratered the
unpopular Republican orthodoxy during the 2016 primaries by promising such heretical ideas as
a non-interventionist foreign policy, protection for Medicare/Medicaid and social security,
improvement on Obamacare, higher taxes on the wealthiest and a massive infrastructure program
to rebuild the decaying facilities of this so-called once grate nation.
These are all ideas that gained the support of enough Obama voters and independents in
just the right flyover states to lead Trump to an improbable victory while being soundly
thrashed in the popular voting nationwide. A stunning, historical accomplishment as much as
and as much in reaction too, the 2008 Obama victory.
Of course, to those of us who understand the modern GOP and the history of the lying-ass
self promotion of the Trump entertainment spectacle its own self, we were neither duped nor
surprised when the initial 2017 legislative agenda items proferred were none of the populist
agenda but instead were the repeal of Obamacare, massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the
reversal of all Obama executive orders, most notably in the areas of refugee resettlement and
immigration.
Trump, the so-called change agent who in fact was and still is clueless regarding how to
function as President simply let the craven Obama opposition leaders of the prior 8 years,
McConnell and Ryan set out the typical GOP legislative agenda, which is opposed by a
majority, in some cases overwhelming majority, of Amerikkkans.
Obamacare repeal failed memorably based on but one late night thumb's down taken more out
of personal revenge than the ideology of a very soon to be dead Senator.
Trump's ruling style in large part has substituted for any sense of a coherent agenda in
that he obviously cares only about his base (an obdurate block of 36% of the electorate
consisting almost entirely of white, entitled, racist baby boomers who have devolved into
anti-democratic fascists now that they no longer represent a majority of the US population
and believe (falsely) they have something to protect).
Trump has succeeded in implementing some of his campaign ideas and not all of them are
100% evil or wrongheaded. He has shaken the long term calcification of the US foreign and
trade policy, has introduced tariffs especially to combat clearly unfair Chinese trade
practices while demanding European and Asian allies pay more for their defense of
empire.
While I have my own view of whether any of Trump's policies contain great value from a
long term historical perspective, I do recognize Trump's appeal to certain sectors of the
internet, including most obviously certain useful idiots of the ultra left.
I do not believe his victory to be a fluke of nature but rather in keeping with the
current worldwide trend borne of aging whitebread fear, cyncism and disenchantment with
elitist political/economic establishments and which has been amped to a viral degree by a
staggering wealth disparity, but only as it impacts the formerly entitled feeling, aging
white people situated in western countries.
The natural response to any socially or cultural threat is to band together tribally and
fight back. And the main threat, when it is boiled down, is the fear of overpopulation (and
its accompnaying unstoppable environmental degradation) driven by what is viewed
through the Trump voter political lens as non-white, primitive, illsuited people from
shithole countries who are and will continue to ruin Amerikkka and Western Europe.
As perfectly illustrated by the migrant caravan heading to Tijuana.
Unfortunately, Trump through disinterest or incompetence or both hasn't followed through
either with enough of the promises he made that are actually meaningful to most people,
whether GOP or Democratic. He has been able to bind his tribe to him and conquer the GOP
political apparatus simply because the Party platform was already so badly decayed
(overcooked Reagan leftovers) and out of touch with reality pre-Trump that the Donald could
bend delusional conservative tropes in any way he saw fit to his electoral advantage. As long
as he infotained well, and he has indeed, he would dominate.
As b stated recently, Trump is an astute salesman (unfortunately, that is all he is)
but what is left unmentioned is that he is of the sales school that is totally unmoored for
any sense of ethical, moral or legal responsibility.
In other words, Trump is that quintessential Amerikkkan salesman: the grifter. This
particular breed of business person is not an exception in the US but rather the rule. In
fact, the US system has devolved to the point where laws and regulations now enfranchise what
previously had been considered illegal activity. Amerikkkans are heavily incentivised these
days by the call to a form of monopolistic, crony capitalism and institulionised rigged
gambling ("Wall Street"), which in more quaint times was considered mobsterism.
Institutions have been purposefully compromised so they no longer support whatever
criminal laws still exist. It is not by accident that the IRS is now chronically understaffed
and has no effective way to stop income tax cheating or collection of the minimal taxes now
due.
It is not by accident that Trump's main role as President is to weaken institutions such
as the media, to further debase language and kill whatever generally accepted objective truth
remain extant in the land. He is recognisable to all Amerikkkans as a CEO in support of this
ongoing wave of legal criminality through which the 1% and their lackeys section have
prospered at the expense of the 99%.
The US political system was invested with an ability to self-correct, or self-police
through separation of powers within the tripartite political system. It is hardly news this
system is about dead, starting not with Trump of course, but now reaching its absolute low
point under his rule and the acquiescence of the spineless GOP.
And no, I don't believe the Demotardic Party to be absolved of blame in any way. Rather,
the Demotards have entirely gone along to get along with this same trend because of course
the Party leaders have been able to criminally enrich themselves and their cronies along the
way too.
However, let's be real for minute and drop all pretense of holier than thou keyboard
revolutionism. The ultimate solution of the world's disease is not going to be resolved in
2018 through a political revolution, especially one inspired by the disharmony and fraud of
internet based social media and its acolytes. D'uh.
Look around. Since we have been blogging our lives away the world has only grown further
away from leftism. We live in a fascist police state owned and operated by teh ultra wealthy
who have dropped pretense of any humanitarian or religious concern for those less firtunated
than themselves.
Donald Trump has one more chance to make himself truly into the transformational leader he
believes himself to be in his degraded soul.
The first bill on the 2019 legislative needs to be a bipartisan infrastructure bill of
such scope and magnitude that it will serve not only a political change of direction but also
redirect the economy in such way that wealth is re-directed from the wealthy to the rest of
us, particularly those able bodied non-college educated people who have suffered through the
last several decades without hope or gain.
Trump must dictate to his party that Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security will not only
be maintained but strengthened through improved benefits.
Am I dreaming? Yes, I admit that I am. But I'm also calling out to the criminal conman in
chief: it's not too late to reclaim your own legacy.
"... Her announcement on Monday that she will vacate the leadership of Germany's ruling center-right Christian Democrats marks the culmination of what has been a slow denouement of Merkelism. ..."
"... Long the emblematic figure of "Europe," hailed by the neoliberal Economist as the continent's moral voice, long the dominant decider of its collective foreign and economic policies, Merkel will leave office with border fences being erected and disdain for European political institutions at their highest pitch ever. In this sense, she failed as dramatically as her most famous predecessors, Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl, succeeded in their efforts to make Germany both important and normal in the postwar world. ..."
"... "We can do this!" she famously declared. Europe, she said, must "show flexibility" over refugees. Then, a few days later, she said there was "no limit" to the number of migrants Germany could accept. At first, the burgeoning flood of mostly young male asylum claimants produced an orgy of self-congratulatory good feeling, celebrity posturing of welcome, Merkel greeting migrants at the train station, Merkel taking selfies with migrants, Merkel touted in The Economist as "Merkel the Bold." ..."
"... The euphoria, of course, did not last. Several of the Merkel migrants carried out terror attacks in France that fall. (France's socialist prime minister Manuel Valls remarked pointedly after meeting with Merkel, "It was not us who said, 'Come!'") Reports of sexual assaults and murders by migrants proved impossible to suppress, though Merkel did ask Mark Zuckerberg to squelch European criticism of her migration policies on Facebook. Intelligent as she undoubtedly is (she was a research chemist before entering politics), she seemed to lack any intellectual foundation to comprehend why the integration of hundreds of thousands of people from the Muslim world might prove difficult. ..."
"... Merkel reportedly telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu to ask how Israel had been so successful in integrating so many immigrants during its brief history. There is no record of what Netanyahu thought of the wisdom of the woman posing this question. ..."
"... In any case, within a year, the Merkel initiative was acknowledged as a failure by most everyone except the chancellor herself. ..."
Drop of Light/Shutterstock Whatever her accomplishments
as pathbreaking female politician and respected leader of Europe's dominant economic power, Angela Merkel will go down in history
for her outburst of naivete over the issue of migration into Europe during the summer of 2015.
Her announcement on Monday that she will vacate the leadership of Germany's ruling center-right Christian Democrats marks
the culmination of what has been a slow denouement of Merkelism.
She had seen the vote share of her long dominant party shrink in one regional election after another. The rebuke given to her
last weekend in Hesse, containing the Frankfurt region with its booming economy, where she had campaigned extensively, was the final
straw. Her CDU's vote had declined 10 points since the previous election, their voters moving toward the further right (Alternative
fur Deutschland or AfD). Meanwhile, the further left Greens have made dramatic gains at the expense of Merkel's Social Democrat coalition
partners.
Long the emblematic figure of "Europe," hailed by the neoliberal Economist as the continent's moral voice, long the
dominant decider of its collective foreign and economic policies, Merkel will leave office with border fences being erected and disdain
for European political institutions at their highest pitch ever. In this sense, she failed as dramatically as her most famous predecessors,
Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Helmut Kohl, succeeded in their efforts to make Germany both important and normal
in the postwar world.
One can acknowledge that while Merkel never admitted error for her multiculti summer fling (beyond wishing she had communicated
her goals better), she did manage to adjust her policies. By 2016, Germany under her watch was paying a healthy ransom to Turkey
to keep would-be migrants in camps and preventing them from sailing to Greece. Merkel's departure will make the battle to succeed
her one of the most watched political contests in Europe. She has turned migration into a central and quite divisive issue within
the CDU and Germany, and the party may decide that it has no choice but to accommodate, in one way or another, the voters who have
left them for the AfD.
Related to the issue of who should reside in Europe (objectively the current answer remains anyone who can get there) is the question
of how are such questions decided. In July 2015, five years after asserting in a speech that multiculturalism has
"utterly failed" in Germany (without addressing what policies should be pursued in an increasingly ethnically diverse society)
and several weeks after reducing a young Arab girl to tears at a televised forum by telling her that those whose asylum claims were
rejected would "have to go back" and that "politics is hard," Merkel changed course.
For those interested in psychological studies of leadership and decision making, it would be hard to imagine a richer subject.
Merkel's government first announced it would no longer enforce the rule (the Dublin agreement) that required asylum claimants to
be processed in the first country they passed through. Then she doubled down. The migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war, along with
those who pretended to be Syrian, and then basically just anyone, could come to Germany.
"We can do this!" she famously declared. Europe, she said, must "show flexibility" over refugees. Then, a few days later,
she said there was "no limit" to the number of migrants Germany could accept. At first, the burgeoning flood of mostly young male
asylum claimants produced an orgy of self-congratulatory good feeling, celebrity posturing of welcome, Merkel greeting migrants at
the train station, Merkel taking selfies with migrants, Merkel touted in The Economist as
"Merkel the Bold."
Her words traveled far beyond those fleeing Syria. Within 48 hours of the "no limit" remark, TheNew York Times
reported a sudden stirring of migrants from Nigeria. Naturally Merkel boasted in a quiet way about how her decision had revealed
that Germany had put its Nazi past behind it. "The world sees Germany as a land of hope and chances," she said. "That wasn't always
the case." In making this decision personally, Merkel was making it for all of Europe. It was one of the ironies of a European arrangement
whose institutions were developed in part to transcend nationalism and constrain future German power that 70 years after the end
of the war, the privately arrived-at decision of a German chancellor could instantly transform societies all over Europe.
The euphoria, of course, did not last. Several of the Merkel migrants carried out terror attacks in France that fall. (France's
socialist prime minister Manuel Valls remarked pointedly after meeting with Merkel, "It was not us who said, 'Come!'") Reports of
sexual assaults and murders by migrants proved impossible to suppress, though Merkel did ask Mark Zuckerberg to squelch European
criticism of her migration policies on Facebook. Intelligent as she undoubtedly is (she was a research chemist before entering politics),
she seemed to lack any intellectual foundation to comprehend why the integration of hundreds of thousands of people from the Muslim
world might prove difficult.
Merkel reportedly telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu to ask how Israel had been so successful in integrating so many immigrants
during its brief history. There is no record of what Netanyahu thought of the wisdom of the woman posing this question.
In any case, within a year, the Merkel initiative was acknowledged as a failure by most everyone except the chancellor herself.
Her public approval rating plunged from 75 percent in April 2015 to 47 percent the following summer. The first electoral rebuke came
in September 2016, when the brand new anti-immigration party, the Alternative fur Deutschland, beat Merkel's CDU in Pomerania.
In every election since, Merkel's party has lost further ground. Challenges to her authority from within her own party have become
more pointed and powerful. But the mass migration accelerated by her decision continues, albeit at a slightly lower pace.
Angela Merkel altered not only Germany but the entire European continent, in irreversible ways, for decades to come.
Scott McConnell is a founding editor ofand the author of Ex-Neocon: Dispatches From the Post-9/11 Ideological Wars
.
"... On the other hand, President Trump is pushing Merkel on policy on Russia and Ukraine that furthers the image that she is simply a stooge of U.S. geopolitical ambitions. Don't ever forget that Germany is, for all intents and purposes, an occupied country. So, what the U.S. military establishment wants, Merkel must provide. ..."
"... But Merkel, further weakened by another disastrous state election, isn't strong enough to fend off her emboldened Italian and British opposition (and I'm not talking about The Gypsum Lady, Theresa May here). ..."
"... Merkel is a lame-duck now. Merkelism is over. Absentee governing from the center standing for nothing but the international concerns has been thoroughly rebuked by the European electorate from Spain to the shores of the Black Sea. ..."
"... Germany will stand for something other than globalism by the time this is all over. There will be a renaissance of culture and tradition there that is similar to the one occurring at a staggering pace in Russia. ..."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stepped down as the leader of the Christian Democratic
Union, the party she has led for nearly two decades. Yesterday's election in Hesse, normally a
CDU/SPD stronghold was abysmal for them.
She had to do something to quell the revolt brewing against her.
Merkel knew going in what the polls were showing. Unlike American and British polls, it
seems the German ones are mostly accurate with pre-election polls coming close to matching the
final results.
So, knowing what was coming for her and in the spirit of trying to maintain power for as
long as possible Merkel has been moving away from her staunch positions on unlimited
immigration and being in lock-step with the U.S. on Russia.
She's having to walk a tightrope on these two issues as the turmoil in U.S. political
circles is pulling her in, effectively, opposite directions.
The globalist Davos Crowd she works for wants the destruction of European culture and
individual national sovereignty ground into a paste and power consolidated under the rubric of
the European Union.
They also want Russia brought to heel.
On the other hand, President Trump is pushing Merkel on policy on Russia and Ukraine that
furthers the image that she is simply a stooge of U.S. geopolitical ambitions. Don't ever
forget that Germany is, for all intents and purposes, an occupied country. So, what the U.S.
military establishment wants, Merkel must provide.
So, if she rejects that role and the chaos U.S. policy engenders, particularly Syria, she's
undermining the flow of migrants into Europe.
This is why it was so significant that she and French President Emmanuel Macron joined this
weekend's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan in Istanbul.
It ended with an agreement on Syria's future that lies in direct conflict with the U.S.'s
goals of the past seven years.
It was an admission that Assad has prevailed in Syria and the plan to atomize it into yet
another failed state has itself failed. Merkel has traded 'Assad must go' for 'no more
refugees.'
To President Trump's credit he then piggy-backed on that statement announcing that the U.S.
would be pulling out of Syria very soon now. And that tells me that he is still coordinating in
some way with Putin and other world leaders on the direction of his foreign policy in spite of
his opposition.
But the key point from the Istanbul statement was that Syria's rebuilding be prioritized to
reverse the flow of migrants so Syrians can go home. While
Gilbert Doctorow is unconvinced by France's position here , I think Merkel has to be
focused on assisting Putin in achieving his goal of returning Syria to Syrians.
Because, this is both a political necessity for Merkel as well as her trying to burnish her
crumbling political throne to maintain power.
The question is will Germans believe and/or forgive her enough for her to stay in power
through her now stated 'retirement' from politics in 2021?
I don't think so and it's obvious Davos Crowd boy-toy Macron is working overtime to salvage
what he can for them as Merkel continues to face up to the political realities across Europe,
which is that populism is a natural reaction to these insane policies.
Merkel's job of consolidating power under the EU is unfinished. They don't have financial
integration. The Grand Army of the EU is still not a popular idea. The euro-zone is a disaster
waiting to happen and its internal inconsistencies are adding fuel to an already pretty hot
political fire.
On this front, EU integration, she and Macron are on the same page. Because 'domestically'
from an EU perspective, Brexit still has to be dealt with and the showdown with the Italians is
only just beginning.
But Merkel, further weakened by another disastrous state election, isn't strong enough to
fend off her emboldened Italian and British opposition (and I'm not talking about The Gypsum
Lady, Theresa May here).
And Macron should stop looking in the mirror long enough to see he's standing on a quicksand
made of blasting powder.
This points to the next major election for Europe, that of the European Parliament in May
where all of Merkel's opposition are focused on wresting control of that body and removing
Jean-Claude Juncker or his hand-picked replacement (Merkel herself?) from power.
The obvious transition for Merkel is from German Chancellor to European Commission
President. She steps down as Chancellor in May after the EPP wins a majority then to take
Juncker's job. I'm sure that's been the plan all along. This way she can continue the work she started
without having to face the political backlash at home.
But, again, how close is Germany to snap elections if there is another migrant attack and
Chemnitz-like demonstrations. You can only go to the 'Nazi' well so many times, even in
Germany.
There comes a point where people will have simply had enough and their anger isn't born of
being intolerant but angry at having been betrayed by political leadership which doesn't speak
for them and imported crime, chaos and violence to their homes.
And the puppet German media will not be able to contain the story. The EU's speech rules
will not contain people who want to speak. The clamp down on hate speech, pioneered by Merkel
herself is a reaction to the growing tide against her.
And guess what? She can't stop it.
The problem is that Commies like Merkel and Soros don't believe in anything. They are
vampires and nihilists as I said over the
weekend suffused with a toxic view of humanity.
Oh sure, they give lip service to being inclusive and nice about it while they have
control over the levers of power, the State apparatus. But, the minute they lose control of
those levers, the sun goes down, the fangs come out and the bloodletting begins.
These people are vampires, sucking the life out of a society for their own ends. They are
evil in a way that proves John Barth's observation that "man can do no wrong." For they never
see themselves as the villain.
No. They see themselves as the savior of a fallen people. Nihilists to their very core
they only believe in power. And, since power is their religion, all activities are justified
in pursuit of their goals.
Their messianic view of themselves is indistinguishable to the Salafist head-chopping
animals people like Hillary empowered to sow chaos and death across the Middle East and North
Africa over the past decade.
Add to this Merkel herself who took Hillary's empowerment of these animals and gave them a
home across Europe. At least now Merkel has the good sense to see that this has cost her nearly
everything.
Even if she has little to no shame.
Hillary seems to think she can run for president again and win with the same schtick she
failed with twice before. Frankly, I welcome it like I welcome the sun in the morning, safe in
the knowledge that all is right with the world and she will go down in humiliating defeat yet
again.
Merkel is a lame-duck now. Merkelism is over. Absentee governing from the center standing
for nothing but the international concerns has been thoroughly rebuked by the European
electorate from Spain to the shores of the Black Sea.
Germany will stand for something other than globalism by the time this is all over. There
will be a renaissance of culture and tradition there that is similar to the one occurring
at a staggering pace in Russia.
Among the many untruths told about Donald Trump is the claim that his is not a movement of
ideas. As a candidate in 2016, Trump may not have spoken the language of the policy wonks. But
unlike those Republicans who did, his view of the world was not a stale ideological cliche. It
was instead refreshingly frank: about a foreign policy that couldn't win the wars it waged, an
economy that imperiled middle- and working-class America, and an immigration regime only the
employers of illegal nannies could love. Trump recognized reality, and that drew to his cause
independent-minded intellectuals who had also done so. The Trump movement suffers not from a
dearth of ideas or thinkers, but a dearth of institutions. It has thinkers but no think
tank.
F.H. Buckley, Foundation Professor at George Mason University's Scalia School of Law, is one
of its thinkers. His new book, The Republican Workers Party , comes from a publisher --
Encounter -- led by another, Roger Kimball. Buckley is no relation to William F., who as
writer, editor, and Firing Line host did more than anyone to make conservatism a byword
for eloquence in the latter half of the 20th century. But much as the other Buckley remade the
Right by founding National Review in 1955, this one aims to bring about a profound
change of heart and mind among conservatives. He wants to make good on the promise of the GOP
as a party for American workers.
It was a promise made right from the beginning, when in the mid-19th century the Republicans
were the party of free labor against the slavocracy. But the GOP and the country lost their
way. Today, in Buckley's telling, a self-perpetuating "New Class" of administrators and
mandarins runs the country from perches of privilege in the academy and nonprofit sector, as
well as the media, government, and much of the business world. Republicans of the Never Trump
variety are as much a part of this ruling caste as Clinton-Schumer-Pelosi Democrats are. And if
you might wonder whether someone in Buckley's position isn't part of the same professional
stratum, his answer is that he very much aspires to be a traitor to his class, just as Donald
Trump is.
Trump, writes Buckley, is "unlike anything we've seen before, for the simple reason that
he's up against something that we've never seen before: a liberalism that has given up on the
American Dream of a mobile and classless society." Those who today style themselves as
progressives are nothing of the sort -- they are not revolutionaries but the new aristocrats:
"They are Bourbons who seek to pass themselves off as Jacobins. They have bought into a radical
leftism, while resisting the call to unseat a patrician class that leftists in the past would
have opposed."
This is an eloquent explanation for an inversion that has puzzled many observers. Today's
Left, at least the mainstream Left represented by the Democratic Party, is now
establishmentarian. The Republican Right is now populist, if not downright revolutionary. "When
the upper class is composed of liberals who support socialist measures to keep us immobile and
preserve their privileged position," Buckley argues, "class warfare to free up our economy by
tearing down an aristocracy is conservative and just, as well as popular."
Buckley came to these conclusions before the rise of Donald Trump. They are at the heart of
his last two books, The Way Back and The Republic of Virtue . He recognized in
Trump a force for salutary change. So in early 2016, he signed up as a speechwriter for the
candidate and his family. At one point, this attracted unwanted attention: a speech delivered
by Donald Trump Jr. was found to have plagiarized an article in . Except it wasn't plagiarism:
Buckley was the author of both. I was editor of the magazine at the time, and Buckley is
correct when he says in The Republican Workers Party that I enjoyed the non-scandal --
because it brought attention to an essay I thought deserved a brighter spotlight than it had
initially received.
A further disclosure or two is in order: I also published some of the material that appears
in The Republican Workers Party in the journal I now edit, Modern Age , and I'm
thanked in the book's acknowledgments. My warm words for Buckley's last volume are quoted on
the dust jacket of this one. The review you're reading now is honest, but subjective -- I'm a
part of the story. Only a small one, however: Buckley reveals many details of the Trump
campaign and post-election transition that I had never heard before, including how Michael
Anton came to be hired and fired.
The campaign memoir is intriguing in its own right, but it's in the service of the book's
larger purpose. I've known Buckley to refer to himself as an economic determinist, and he's
also said that the future will be decided by a fight between the right-wing Marxists and the
left-wing Marxists. But those are exaggerations, and The Republican Workers Party isn't
primarily about economics: quite the contrary, it's about solidarity, humanity, and the
Christian spirit of brotherhood. The book is informed by a religious sensibility as much as it
is by policy acumen. But it's a religious sensibility that addresses the soul through material
conditions. Buckley is critical of attempts at a "moral rearmament crusade" that amounts to
shaming the poor and blaming them for their own condition.
On this, Buckley is at odds with what movement conservatism has promoted over the last
30-odd years, which is a pure moralism alongside a theoretically pure free-market economism,
each restricted to its own categorical silo. An economic conservative or libertarian might thus
approach Buckley's book with the trepeditation of a holy Inquisitor fearful that a friend will
be found committing heresy. But there is little in these pages that a free-market conservative
can quibble with at the policy level: rather it is the spirit in which economic conservatives
conduct politics that Buckley criticizes. He is even on the side of conservative orthodoxy,
more or less, when it comes to tariffs. He's a free trader at heart, though not a dogmatic
one.
On immigration, he favors a more Canadian-like, points-based system that would prioritize
skills, with a view toward providing maximum benefit for our current citizens, especially the
least well off among them. The present system "admits people who underbid native-born Americans
for low-skill jobs, while refusing entry to people with greater skills who would make life
better for all Americans." Canada lets in many more immigrants in proportion to its population
than the United States does, but "Canadians see an immigration policy designed to benefit the
native-born, so they don't think their government wants to stick it to them," even when it
comes to generous admission of refugees.
Buckley speaks from experience about immigration and Canada -- he was born, brought up, and
lived most of his life there before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2014. Like Alexander Hamilton,
whose Caribbean origins gave him a view of America's national economy unprejudiced by sectional
interests, Buckley's Canadian background gives him an independent vantage from which to
consider our characteristic shibboleths unsparingly. The separation of powers, for one, is a
dismal failure that "has given us two or more different Republican parties: a presidential
party, which today is the Republican Workers Party, but also congressional Republican parties
rooted in the issues and preference of local members. There's the Freedom Caucus composed of
Tea Party members, the more moderate Main Street Partnership and whatever maverick senators
were thinking this morning." Federalism too is a mixed bag. These are themes touched lightly
upon here but worked out in detail in such earlier Buckley books as The Once and Future
King .
That's not to say there's something alien about Buckley's ideas. He's an heir to Viscount
Bolingbroke, as were many of the Founding Fathers. (He contrasts Bolingbroke's disinterested
ideal of a patriot king, for example, with the identity-driven politics of the Democratic
Party.) But Buckley is also an heir to George Grant and the Anglo-Canadian tradition of Red
Toryism, a form of conservatism that does not bother itself with anti-government formulas that
never seem to reduce the size of government one iota anyway. Buckley's heroes are "leaders such
as Disraeli, Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston's father) and even Winston Churchill himself."
"They were conservative" but "they supported generous social welfare policies."
The policies that Buckley is most concerned about, however, are those that generate social
mobility. Education is thus high on his agenda. He is a strong supporter of vouchers and school
choice and points again to Canada as a success story for private schools receiving public
funds. But America is a rather different country, and as popular as vouchers are on the Right,
some of us can't help but wonder whether they would lead to the same outcome in primary and
secondary education that federal financial aid has produced in higher education. With the money
comes regulation, and usually soaring prices, too.
But Buckley is right that the defects of our present education system go a long way toward
explaining the rise of the new status class, and other countries have found answers to the
questions that perplex American politics -- or some of them at least. More adventurous thinking
is required if anything is to be saved of the American dream of mobility, in place of the
nightmare of division into static castes of winners and losers.
Libertarian economists and blame-the-poor moralizers are not the only figures on the Right
Buckley criticizes. He has no patience for the barely disguised Nietzscheanism of certain "East
Coast" Straussians, who imagine themselves to be philosopher-princes, educating a class of
obedient gentlemen who will in turn dominate a mass of purely appetitive worker bees and cannon
fodder.
Buckley's book is an argument against right-wing heartlessness. Its title may conjure in
some minds phantoms of the National Socialist German Workers Party or America's own penny-ante
white nationalist Traditionalist Workers Party, on which the media has lavished a certain
amount of attention in recent years. But fascists are not traditionalists, workers, or even,
properly speaking, socialists -- they simply steal whatever terms happen to be popular. Buckley
refuses to concede their claims and appease them.
He is eloquent in his American -- not white -- nationalism. "There isn't much room for white
nationalism in American culture," he writes, "For alongside baseball and apple pie, it includes
Langston Hughes and Amy Tan, Tex-Mex food and Norah Jones. You can be an American if you don't
enjoy them, but you might be a wee bit more American if you do." It's populism, not
nationalism, that he considers a toxic term, its genealogy tracing to figures like "Pitchfork
Ben" Tillman, a Jim Crow proponent and defender of lynch mobs.
He is right to defend the honor of nationalism, but Buckley may be mistaken in his animus
toward "populism," a word that for most people is more likely to bring to mind William Jennings
Bryan than the Ku Klux Klan.
Buckley's project in The Republican Workers Party parallels on the Right the task
taken up by Mark Lilla on the Left in last year's The Once and Future Liberal . Like
Lilla, Buckley wants to see a revival of mid-20th-century liberalism. For both, politics is
ultimately class-based, not identity-based. Lilla trains his fire on the identity-parsing Left,
while Buckley rebukes the Right for failing to fight the class war -- or rather, for fighting
on the wrong side, that of the self-serving New Class, the aristocracy of education,
connections, and right-thinking opinion.
This may seem nostalgic, but it's not: Buckley does not expect a return to JFK or Camelot,
even if, like Lilla, he once borrowed a title from T.H. White. The 21st century can only give
us a new and very different Kennedy or Disraeli -- an insurgent from the Right to retake the
center. In Donald Trump, F.H. Buckley found such a figure, but a movement needs a program as
well as a leader, and the program has to be grounded in an idea of humanity and the limits of
politics. The nation defines those limits, and while not every Trump supporter will agree with
Buckley's policy thought in all its specifics, the spirit of Buckley's endeavor represents what
is finest in the Trump moment, and what is best in conservatism, too.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
"... As to your question about who votes for Bolsonaro, I think we can break this down into three or four categories. His hard core is the sort of middle class of small business owners, plus members of the police and the armed forces. This would be, I guess, your classic fascist constituency, if you want to call it that. But you know, that's a very small proportion. ..."
"... Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is a former academic sociologist who was exiled during the military dictatorship and was president of Brazil in the late '90s. He has yet to endorse Haddad, despite the fact that Bolsonaro previously said something about 10 years ago that Fernando Henrique Cardoso should have been killed by the military dictatorship. This is a real, in my opinion, a real failure of character, a real cowardice from the Brazilian supposedly-centrist elite to defend democracy against the very obvious threat that Bolsonaro poses. ..."
As to your question about who votes for Bolsonaro, I think we can break this down into
three or four categories. His hard core is the sort of middle class of small business owners,
plus members of the police and the armed forces. This would be, I guess, your classic fascist
constituency, if you want to call it that. But you know, that's a very small proportion.
And certainly in terms of his voters, in terms of his voter base, that's a small proportion.
What you have, then, is the rich, amongst whom he has a very significant lead. He polls 60-65
percent amongst the rich. And these people are motivated by what is called [inaudible]machismo,
which is anti-Worker's Party sentiment, which is really a sort form of barely-disguised class
loathing which targets the Worker's Party, rails against corruption, but of course turns a
blind eye to corruption amongst more traditional right-wing politicians.
These are the people who, at the end of the day, are quite influential, and have probably
proved decisive for Bolsonaro. But that isn't to say that he doesn't have support amongst the
poor, and this is the real issue. Bolsonaro would not win an election with just the support of
the reactionary middle class and the rich. He needs the support amongst the broad masses, and
he does have that to a significant degree, unfortunately.
What are they motivated by? They're motivated by a sense that politics has failed them, that
their situation is pretty hopeless. The security situation is very grave. And Bolsonaro seems
to be someone who might do something different, might change things. It's a bit of a rolling of
the dice kind of situation. And you know, here the Worker's Party does bear some blame. They've
lost a large section of the working class. A large section of the poor feel like they were
betrayed by the Worker's Party, who didn't stay true to its promises. The Worker's Party
implemented the austerity in its last government under Dilma, which led to a ballooning of
unemployment. And you know, there's a sense that- well, what have you done for us? A lot of
people don't want to return to the path. They want something better, and kind of roll the dice
hoping that maybe Bolsonaro does something, even though all evidence points to the fact that
he'll be a government for the rich, and the very rich, and for the forces of repression.
GREG WILPERT: So finally, in the little time that we have remaining, what is
happening to Brazil's left? Is it supporting the Haddad campaign wholeheartedly?
ALEX HOCHULI: Yes, absolutely. It's pretty much uniform amongst the left. Certainly
in terms of, you know, in terms of individuals, in terms of groups, in terms of movements.
Everyone, from even the kind of far-left Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party who
hate PT have told its members that they should vote for Fernando Haddad who, it should be
noted, is a figure to the right of that of PT, I guess, within the party. He's a much more
centrist figure. So that's kind of notable.
What hasn't happened is a broad front against fascism. That hasn't really materialized,
because the Brazilian center has failed to defend its democratic institutions against the very
obvious threat that Bolsonaro represents. You know, just to highlight one thing, Eduardo
Bolsonaro, who is Jair Bolsonar's son and a congressman, has threatened the Supreme Court,
saying that you could close down the Supreme Court. All you have to do is send one soldier and
one corporal, and they'll shut down the Supreme Court. I mean, this is a pretty brave threat
against Brazilian institutions. And a lot of the center has failed to really manifest itself,
really failed to take a stand. Marina Silva, who was at one point polling quite high about six
months ago, who is a kind of an environmentalist and an evangelical and a centrist, and who is
known for always in her speeches talking about doing things democratically, even she- it took
her until this week to finally endorse Haddad, lending Haddad critical support.
The center right, which should be the, you know, the Brazilian establishment, the ones
upholding the institutions, have broadly failed to endorse Haddad as the democratic candidate.
Which is really, really striking. I mean, just to give you one example, probably the best known
figure for your viewers outside of Brazil who might not know the ins and outs and all the
players involved, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is a former academic sociologist who was
exiled during the military dictatorship and was president of Brazil in the late '90s. He has
yet to endorse Haddad, despite the fact that Bolsonaro previously said something about 10 years
ago that Fernando Henrique Cardoso should have been killed by the military dictatorship. This
is a real, in my opinion, a real failure of character, a real cowardice from the Brazilian
supposedly-centrist elite to defend democracy against the very obvious threat that Bolsonaro
poses.
GREG WILPERT: Wow. Amazing. We'll definitely keep our eyes peeled for what happens on
Sunday. We'll probably have you back soon. I'm speaking to Alex Hochuli, researcher and
communication consultant based in Sao Paulo. Thanks again, Alex, for having joined us
today.
Not to worry. Brexit is rather a textbook example of the political/economic dichotomy to
which I speak @ 5.
There will be no Brexit in economic or political reality. It isn't even remotely possible,
even in the unlikely event the EU collapses in the short term. There may be a pseudo "Brexit"
for political face-saving purposes, true, which will consist of a similar sales effort as
Trump is making to hold onto his own age-depressed plebes in flyover USArya.
"Brexit is coming! Brexit is coming! Tariffs are easy! Tariffs are easy! Hold on a bit
longer, we are just trying to get it right for you little people not to suffer anymore."
Lol.
@6 "Sadly many left wing ppl prefer EU neoliberal anti democratic, corrupt rule over their
own sovereign democratic institutions."
I see it more as a neoliberal desire to belong to some vague bigger global entity. Plus
the fact that since WW2 nationalism has become equated with fascism.
Britain has never been totally part of Europe....geographically or politically.
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Oct 21, 2018 10:16:20 AM |
link
@dh-mtl: True that. Sadly many left wing ppl prefer EU neoliberal anti democratic, corrupt
rule over their own souvereign democratic institutions. It was the national state (with its
additional regional democratic institutions) that brought us democracy, not the neolibs EU.
But that truth hurts, and many prefer empty slogans against the evil national state over a
honest analysis.
@B: Inoreader cant find new feeds for some days, something is broken!
With Brexit, the U.K. is trying to save itself before it collapses to a state similar to
Greece.
The E.U., because it is essentially a financially based dictatorship, and is fatally
flawed, will break apart. And, in this sense, I agree with you that the U.K. is ahead of the
curve.
Abandoning nuclear treaty is just a diversion to steer away eyes off Khashoggi case, latter
being even more important as it wedges in the very depth of an internal US political
demise.
UK barks there on Russia to steer its own downfall into spotlight of an importance on a world
stage that is close to null. UK didn't even sign anything with Russia as basically nobody
else did from within NATO, so one can render that INF as outdated and stale.
Will they come up with a new one that suits all or we will just let it go and slip into
unilateral single polarity downfall of West? Answers are coming along real soon.
Right now US and a few vasal allies left are getting into dirty set of strategic games
opposing far more skilled opponents and it will come around at a really high price. EU has
lost many contracts lately in mid east due to America First, so a lots of sticks in US wheels
are coming up. It is going to be a real fun watching all that and reading b. and others on
MoA..
The UK will most likely crash out of the EU. Of course, one can't exclude that some
last minute holding action, temp. solution, or reversal can be found - but I doubt it.
Northern Ireland will break away. The analysis of the vote has been very poor, and based
on an 'identity politics' and slice-n-dice views. Pensioners afraid to lose their pension,
deplorables, victims of austerity, lack of young voter turnout, etc.
NI and Scotland are ruled by a tri-partite scheme: 'home rule', 'devolution' - Westminster
- and the EU. The two peripheral entities prefer belonging to and participating in the larger
group (see also! reasons historical and of enmity etc.) which has on the whole been good for
them. England prefers a return to some mythical sovereignity / nationalism, getting rid of
the super-ordinate power, a last desperate stab at Britannia (hm?) rules the waves or at
least some bloody thing like traffic on the Thames, labor law, etc. The UK had no business
running that referendum - by that I mean that in the UK pol. system Parliament rules supreme,
which is antithetical to the referendum approach (in any case the result is only advisory)
and running it was a signal of crack-up. By now, it is clear that the UK political / Gvmt.
system is not fit for handling problems in the years 2000.
Why NI and not Scotland (which might split as well ..)? From a geo-political pov, because
geography bats last - yes. And also because NI is the much weaker entity. EU has stated (Idk
about texts etc.): if and when a EU member conquers, annexes, brings into the fold some
'other' territory, it then in turn becomes part of the EU. Ex. If Andorra chose to join Spain
it would meld into Eurolandia, with time to adjust to all the rules. Perhaps Macron would no
longer be a Prince!
However, Catalonia *cannot* be allowed to split from Spain (affecting Spanish integrity
and the EU) and if it did it would crash out of the EU, loosing all, so that doesn't work.
Scotland is not Catalonia. NI has had a special status in many ways for a long time so it is
easier to tolerate and imagine alternatives. The EU will pay for NI...
The UK is losing power rapidly and indulging in its own form of 're-trenchment' (different
from the Trumpian desired one) - both are nostalgic, but the British one is more
suicidal.
The only alternative interpretation I can see (suggested by John Michael Greer) is that
the UK is ahead of the curve: a pre-emptive collapse (rather semi-collapse) now would put it
in a better position than others 20 years or so hence. That would also include a break-up
into parts.
"... Another year wouldn't be enough additional time to achieve a trade agreement unless the UK capitulated to EU terms. And a big motivation for this idea seemed to be to try to kick the Irish border can down the road. ..."
"... Theresa May is facing the most perilous week of her premiership after infuriating all sections of her party by making further concessions to Brussels. Her offer to extend the transition period after Brexit -- made without cabinet approval -- enraged Remain and Leave Tory MPs alike. ..."
"... DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has rejected calls for the post-Brexit transition period to be extended, claiming it would cost the UK billions and not break the Irish border deadlock . ..."
"... Theresa May has conceded the Irish backstop cannot have an end date, risking the threat of fresh Cabinet resignations. The PM told Leo Varadkar she accepted Brussels' demands that any fallback border solution cannot be "time-limited". ..."
"... Merkel's effort at an intervention came off like a clueless CEO telling subordinates who have been handed a nearly-impossible task that they need to get more creative ..."
"... Emmanuel Macron, the French president, struck a more uncompromising tone. "It's not for the EU to make some concessions to deal with a British political issue. I can't be more clear on this," he said. "Now the key element for a final deal is on the British side, because the key element is a British political compromise." ..."
"... Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU) 1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements. ..."
"... It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements – an Assembly in Northern Ireland , a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies, a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland – are interlocking and interdependent and that in particular the functioning of the Assembly and the North/South Council are so closely inter-related that the success of each depends on that of the other. ..."
Another year wouldn't be enough additional time to achieve
a trade agreement unless the UK capitulated to EU terms. And a big motivation for this idea
seemed to be to try to kick the Irish border can down the road.
As we'll get to later in this post, the press has filed more detailed reports on the EU's
reactions to May's "nothing new" speech at the European Council summit on Wednesday. The
reactions seem to be more sober; recall the first takes were relief that nothing bad happened
and at least everyone was trying to put their best foot forward. Merkel also pressed Ireland
and the EU to be more flexible over the Irish border question but Marcon took issue with her
position. However, they both
then went to a outdoor cafe and had beers for two hours .
May's longer transition scheme vehemently criticized across Tory factions and by the DUP .
Even pro-Remain Tories are opposed. The press had a field day.
From the Telegraph :
Theresa May was on Thursday evening increasingly isolated over her plan to keep Britain
tied to the EU for longer as she was savaged by both wings of her party and left in the cold
by EU leaders
The move enraged Brexiteers who said it would cost billions, and angered members of the
Cabinet who said they had not formally agreed the plan before she offered it up as a
bargaining chip. Mrs May also faced a potential mutiny from Tory MPs north of the border,
including David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, who said the proposal was "unacceptable"
because it would delay the UK's exit from the hated Common Fisheries Policy.
Theresa May is facing the most perilous week of her premiership after infuriating all
sections of her party by making further concessions to Brussels. Her offer to extend the
transition period after Brexit -- made without cabinet approval -- enraged Remain and Leave
Tory MPs alike.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has rejected calls for the post-Brexit transition period
to be extended, claiming it would cost the UK billions and not break the Irish border
deadlock .
His comments came after Tory MPs on all wings of the party also rejected extending the
transition period.
Former minister Nick Boles, who campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum, told the
Today programme: "I'm afraid she's losing the confidence now of colleagues of all shades of
opinion – people who've been supportive of her throughout this process – they are
close to despair at the state of this negotiation."
Brexiteer MP Andrea Jenkyns tweeted: "Back in July, myself and 36 colleagues signed a
letter to the Prime Minister setting out our red lines – and that was one of them. It's
completely ridiculous."
Scottish Tories say they would veto an extension to the Brexit transition period in
support of their fisherman.
And members of the hard-core Brexit faction are also up in arms about May conceding that an
Irish border backstop can't be time limited. From The
Sun :
Theresa May has conceded the Irish backstop cannot have an end date, risking the
threat of fresh Cabinet resignations. The PM told Leo Varadkar she accepted Brussels' demands
that any fallback border solution cannot be "time-limited".
But a fudge could cost Mrs May two eurosceptic Cabinet ministers, with Esther McVey and
Andrea Leadsom threatening to resign if there's not a set end date.
Merkel pushes for more Brussels-Ireland flexibility while Macron disagrees . I am at risk of
seeming unduly wedded to my priors, but Merkel's effort at an intervention came off like a
clueless CEO telling subordinates who have been handed a nearly-impossible task that they need
to get more creative . While Merkel is correct to point out that no-deal = hard Irish
border, an outcome no one wants, she does not appear to comprehend that the "sea border," which
is politically fraught for the UK, is the only alternative that does not create ginormous
problems for the EU. Merkel's seeming lack of comprehension may reflect the fact that EU
nations don't handle trade negotiations. From the Financial Times
:
At an EU summit dinner and in later public remarks, the German chancellor expressed
concerns about the bloc's stand-off with the UK over the Irish "backstop", a fallback measure
intended to ensure no hard border divides Ireland if other solutions fail. This has become
the biggest outstanding issue in the talks.
Three diplomats said that at the Wednesday night dinner Ms Merkel indicated that the EU
and the Republic of Ireland should rethink their approach on Northern Ireland to avoid a
fundamental clash with London.
Ms Merkel also signaled her concerns in a press conference on Thursday, highlighting that
if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal a hard border for Northern Ireland could be
inevitable.
"If you don't have an agreement you don't have a satisfactory answer [to the border issue]
either," she said, noting that on Northern Ireland "we all need an answer" .
Diplomats said the German chancellor was more forceful about the issue at the Brexit
dinner, although some other leaders remained puzzled about the chancellor's intentions.
The Financial Times also said that the UK and Germany would meet Thursday to "discuss a way
out of the Brexit impasse." Given that Barnier has offered a lot of new ideas in last month, it
is hard to see how anything new could be cooked up, unless the UK hopes to sell Germany on its
already-rejected techno vaporware idea.
Macron made clear he was not on the same page. Again from the Financial Times:
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, struck a more uncompromising tone. "It's not
for the EU to make some concessions to deal with a British political issue. I can't be more
clear on this," he said. "Now the key element for a final deal is on the British side,
because the key element is a British political compromise."
Vardakar also made a statement after the dinner that reaffirmed the importance of the EU
affirming the principles of the single market. From
The Times :
The European Union would have "huge difficulties" in agreeing to extend the Northern Irish
backstop to the rest of the UK, the taoiseach has warned. Leo Varadkar said he did not think
"any country or union" would be asked to sign up to an agreement that would give the UK
access to the single market while also allowing it to "undercut" the EU across a range of
areas including state aid competition, labour laws and environmental standards.
"I would feel very strongly about this, as a European as well as an Irishman: you couldn't
have a situation whereby the UK had access to the single market -- which is our market -- and
at the same time was able to undercut us in terms of standards, whether they were
environmental standards, labour laws, or state aid competition. I don't think any country or
any union would be asked to accept that," Mr Varadkar said in Brussels.
Robert Peston deems odds of crash out high; sees only escape route as "customs union Brexit"
. Robert Peston, who is one of the UK's best connected political reporters, described in a new
piece at ITV how May has at best a narrow path to avoiding a disorderly Brexit, and that is
what he calls a "customs union" Brexit. I am sure if Richard North saw that, he'd be tearing
his hair, since he has been describing for months why a customs union does not solve the
problem that virtually everyone who talks in up in UK thinks it solves, namely, conferring
"frictionless trade".
One key point in his analysis is that the UK will also have to accept "a blind Brexit,"
meaning a very fuzzy statement of what the "future relationship" will be. The EU had offered
that in the last month or so, presumably as a fudge to allow May to get the various wings of
her coalition to agree to something. But Peston says it's too late to do anything else.
From ITV :
Hello from Brussels and the EU Council that promised a Brexit breakthrough and delivered
nothing.
So on the basis of conversations with well-placed sources, this is how I think the Brexit
talks are placed (WARNING: if you are fearful of a no-deal Brexit, or are of a nervous
disposition, stop reading now):
1) Forget about having any clue when we leave about the nature and structure of the UK's
future trading relationship with the EU. The government heads of the EU27 have rejected
Chequers. Wholesale. And they regard it as far too late to put in place the building blocks
of that future relationship before we leave on 29 March 2019. So any Political Declaration on
the future relationship will be waffly, vague and general. It will be what so many MPs
detest: a blind Brexit. The PM may say that won't happen. No one here (except perhaps her own
Downing St team) believes her.
Erm, that alone may be a deal killer. We quoted this section of a Politico article
on October
10 :
5. Future relationship – Blind Brexit
Opposed: Brexiteers, Tory Remainers, the Labour Party, Theresa May
I'll let our astute readers give their reactions to Peston's recommendation to May:
3) There is no chance of the EU abandoning its insistence that there should be a backstop
– with no expiry date – of Northern Ireland, but not Great Britain, remaining in
the Customs Union and the single market. That would involve the introduction of the
commercial border in the Irish Sea that May says must never be drawn.
4) All efforts therefore from the UK are aimed at putting in place other arrangements to
make it impossible for that backstop to be introduced.
5) Her ruse for doing this is the creation of another backstop that would involve the
whole of the UK staying in something that looks like the customs union.
6) But she feels cannot commit to keeping the UK in the customs union forever, because her
Brexiter MPs won't let her. So it does not work as a backstop. And anyway the Article 50
rules say that the Withdrawal Agreement must not contain provisions for a permanent trading
relationship between the whole of the UK and the EU. Which is a hideous Catch 22.
7) There is a solution. She could ignore her Brexiter critics and announce the UK wanted
written into the Political Declaration – not the Withdrawal Agreement – that we
would be staying permanently in the customs union. This is one bit of specificity the rest of
the EU would allow into the Political Declaration. And it could be nodded at in the
Withdrawal Agreement.
8) But if she announces we are staying in the Customs Union she would be crossing her
reddest of red lines because she would have to abandon her ambition of negotiating free trade
deals with non-EU countries. Liam Fox would be made redundant.
9) She knows, because her Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins has told her, that her best
chance – probably her only chance of securing a Brexit deal – is to sign up for
the customs union.
10) In its absence, no-deal Brexit is massively in play.
11) But a customs-union Brexit deal would see her Brexiter MPs become incandescent with
fury.
12) Labour of course would be on the spot, since its one practical Brexit policy is to
stay in the Customs Union.
13) This therefore is May's Robert Peel moment. She could agree a Customs Union Brexit and
get it through Parliament with Labour support – while simultaneously cleaving her own
party in two.
Finally, in an elegiac piece, Richard North contends that the UK didn't need to wind up
where it is:
A reader takes me to task for making comparisons between the Brexit negotiations and the
Allied invasion of Normandy
Yet it is precisely because Mrs May seems to have chosen an adversarial route rather than
a consensual process that I have projected her failings in militaristic terms..
In reality, it would have been best to approach the Brexit process not so much as the end
of a relationship as a redefinition, where the need to continue close cooperation continues,
even if it is to be structured on a different basis
Here, though, lies the essential problem. The EU, as a treaty-based organisation, does not
have the flexibility to change its own rules just to suit the needs of one member, and
especially one which is seeking to leave the Union. Yet, on the other hand, the UK government
has political constraints which prevent it making concessions which would allow the EU to
define a new relationship
But, having put herself in a position where she is demanding something that the EU cannot
give, she herself has no alternative but to adopt an adversarial stance – if for no
other reason than to show her own political allies and critics that she is doing her best to
resolve an impossible situation.
If there is a light at the end of this tunnel, it sure looks like the headlight of an
oncoming train, the Brexit end date bearing down on the principals.
I can't help but wonder whether the proposed time extension was proposed mischievously by
EU negotiators precisely to set off divisions among the Tories. While Barniers no.1 aim is a
deal, the close to no.2 aim must surely be to ensure that in the event of no deal (or a
clearly clapped together bad interim deal), 100% of the blame goes to London. So far, they
are doing a good job with that.
Its a little concerning that Merkel was so off-message, even though she is obviously
correct that a no-deal means a hard border, which is a failure by any standard. I'm pretty
sure we won't see any overt disagreements among the EU 27 as they won't want to give the UK
the satisfaction of having sown dissent. However, that doesn't mean there won't be frantic
background pressure from some (probably pushed by business) to do some sort of deal, even a
bad one. That will inevitable mean leaning heavily on Dublin, if it is seen as the last
obstacle. Any such pressure will be private, not public I'm sure.
The damage limitation is there, for sure, but it's always aimed on rest of the world (i.e.
all but the UK, where the EU will be target in any outcome). TBH, I'm not sure how much
that's needed now..
I wonder if the various negotiating teams are reminded of that nursery rhyme I learned as
a child -- "and the wheels on the bus go round and round ".
As line one of section one of Article 50 explicitly states (and would therefore be given
substantial weight in any reading of the Article itself):
Article 50 – Treaty on European Union (TEU)
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own
constitutional requirements.
The U.K. government cannot change the constitutional settlement for Northern Ireland
without the agreement of the people of the six counties and the Republic and the rest of the
U.K. "Nothing about us, without us" in popular parlance. And Republicans need to give their
consent for any change affecting devolved matters (which is enforceable via a Petition of
Concern). EU laws and directives are devolved matters. Constitutionally, no one can force
anything on anyone in the province.
What the EU is asking the U.K. to do is impossible.
What the U.K. is asking the EU to do is impossible.
A hard border is also impossible, both as an outcome of treaty obligations and also as a
practical matter.
Therefore a no-deal Brexit is inevitable. Therefore, so is a hard border. Which is an
impossibility -- politically and operationally.
No wonder this can got kicked down the road last December. But now we have, oh, look,
what's this here? Who left this can lying around?
I'm not sure. I had always read that sentence as meaning "in accordance with its own
constitutional requirements for withdrawing from treaties in general" ie much more narrowly
focused. Normally, any government has a sovereign right to withdraw from treaties, but it
could be the case, for example, that in some countries parliament has to be informed, debates
have to be held etc, and that's the case that's being covered here. Not to say that my
interpretation (if correct) makes the situation any easier.
I posted a long comment on the French media reporting of Wednesday's talks yesterday. If I
have a moment, I'll look to see if there's anything fresh today. One thing to look out for
will be signs of tension between Paris and Brussels.
I would need a lawyer well versed in international treaty interpretations to give a proper
opinion and ultimately a court to rule on this.
What the wording definitely does not say (we can all read it for ourselves) is anything
along the lines of " may initiate " or " may invoke its right to withdraw " or
suchlike followed by the bit about constitutional adherences. Thus the requirements to act
constitutionally must likely be expected to apply to Article 50 in their entirety. Apart from
any lawyerly parsing, this is also common sense.
The section says a Member State may withdraw and it has to (this is so stating the obvious
the treaty drafting must have had this specifically in mind to mention it) be constitutional
about it. The EU cannot ask a Member State to conduct its withdrawal unconstitutionally.
No, that's not what it means – what it means is that as far as EU law is concerned,
EU law ends there. It's wholly up to the withdrawing state to define and consider.
Yes, and the Member State can't act unconstitutionally in respect of its own withdrawal
proceedings. The EU is reserving the right not to accept any instruction in the matter of a
withdrawal from the EU from the said Member State which is unconstitutional
for that Member State. Nor can the EU foist unconstitutional acts onto a Member
State in respect of the withdrawal. Its a basic principle of any legal system and any law and
any jurisprudence that Party A cannot induce Party B to break the law as a result of an
agreement between them and for that agreement to then remain valid.
As a simpler example, I draw up an agreement that says you'll pay me £100 in a
week's time and you must get the money by whatever means possible. Fast forward a week and
you don't have the £100. I can't use our agreement as an excuse for you to commit an
unlawful act (say, go and steal someone's wallet) "because we've got an agreement you'll pay
me, so that makes it okay no matter what, so long as you give me the money". Nor can you use
your being party to the agreement to say "sorry, I don't have the money, but you can steal it
from my Aunt Flossie, she's never gonna know you took it".
I have a suspicion we are (nearly) saying the same thing. See the separate thread below. A
country that signs the Lisbon Treaty accepts that any decision to withdraw will have to be
taken according to its own constitutional arrangements. This is a national obligation, but I
don't see how the EU could refuse to accept the notification on the basis that it had been
unconstitutionally arrived at, or what standing they would have. I've never heard of anything
similar happening elsewhere.
To rephrase your example. My partner and I lend you £100 and you say that we can have
it back any time we want. I ask for it back, and you refuse to give it to me on the basis
that, in your view, this has to be a joint request from my partner and me.
I buy this only partially, as Scotland has some freedom to set taxes, and NI has also
diverged from other UK laws (the infamous abortion rights).
Of course, from that, to staying in single market is quite a jump, but one could argue
that since majority of the NI voted "remain" (by some margin) they clearly DO wish to stay in
the single market.
Also the "the rest of the UK" is dubious – it's really "without the say so from the
Westminster Parliament". See Scottish Indy referendum – I didn't notice they run it in
England as well? (if they did, I suspect Scots could have been independend by now).
That said, even the above can still be done by a single poll that NI republicans actually
already called for i.e. if there's a hard-border Brexit, NI should get a reunification
vote.
TBH, that's MY suggestion to the impasse. The backstop becomes a reunification referendum.
Not time limited – once the transition period is done, it's done, nor really
challengable. You want SM, you go European, or you stay within the UK. I'd like to see DUP to
froth on that..
It's stated right at the top of the Good Friday Agreement absolutely explicitly:
It is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements –
an Assembly in Northern Ireland , a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies,
a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments
to British Acts of Parliament and the Constitution of Ireland – are interlocking and
interdependent and that in particular the functioning of the Assembly and the North/South
Council are so closely inter-related that the success of each depends on that of the
other.
Treaty texts rarely get so unarguably clear.
This is why I suspect there was such a push in February to get Stormont up and running
again. Without it, everything was stuck in constitutional limbo and lacking any possibility
of constitutionally-authenticated approvals. Similar any possibility of a border poll.
Without a vote in the Assembly, how can the U.K. government have any pretence (that would
withstand a UKSC challenge) that it was responding to a democratic imperative issued by
NI?
Of course, the U.K. government could do whatever the heck it likes by a reintroduced
Direct Rule. At which point the Good Friday Agreement is toast (and the Republic would have
to explicitly buy-in to Direct Rule being initiated). This must be one of the DUP's main game
plans. They really don't care that much about borders in the Irish Sea if they can get rid of
the Good Friday Agreement. The DUP would be quite happy to paint the Garvaghy Road emerald
green from end to end if they could rip that up for good.
An additional complication to this though is the British
Irish Intergovernmental Conference , which explicitly gives the Irish government a say in
non-devolved matters, including the Common Travel area and EU matters. So at least in theory,
the British government must (if the Irish government insists on reconstituting the Council,
which they haven't so far) engage with the Irish government for any change – including
Brexit – to be constitutional.
Its been speculated here that Varadkar has not called for the BIIC to be held in order not
to inflame matters with the DUP.
Yes, I think this holds a lot of water. Especially since the Republic amended its
constitution to facilitate the GFA, it shows how seriously it took the matter. While
politically it may be gruesome for the U.K. to contemplate that it would not be possible to
leave the EU without as a minimum consulting the Republic, I too think there is at least a
possibility it was in fact legally obligated via the GFA to do exactly that.
I read that entirely differently again – my (completely laymans) interpretation is
that it means a countries request for withdrawal must be internally constitutionally based.
In other words, a rogue leader can't simply say 'I'm launching A.50' in defiance of his own
Parliament or courts. Or put another way – the EU can refuse to accept an A.50
application if it can be argued that it was not generated legally in the first place.
I think that's right, though most treaties like this contain some ambiguity in their
wording. Interestingly, the French text gives a slightly different impression.
"Tout État membre peut décider, conformément à ses règles
constitutionnelles, de se retirer de l'Union," which would be translated as "Any member state
may decide, in accordance with its constitutional provisions, to leave the Union." The commas
make it clear that, in French at least, the only decision that has to be taken
constitutionally under the Treaty, is the decision to leave (alinea 1). Once that decision is
taken the states has to inform the EU (alinea 2). Of course, there's a standing general
requirement on governments to behave constitutionally, but that would be a matter for the
domestic courts, not the EU. It must also be true that they should respect their
constitutional rules during the negotiation process. Interestingly, Art 46 of the Vienna
Convention on Treaties deals exactly with your point from the other end – what happens
if a state signs a treaty without going through the proper procedures. I've seen some
suggestions on specialist blogs that Art 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was inspired by the
arguments about this point.
Rubbish. The U.K. government had every right to hold a referendum. It was advisory of
course. But Parliament had every right to invoke A50 as a result of the result.
What the U.K. government had no right whatsoever to do was to pretend that the Good Friday
Agreement obligations could or should be fudged away. Nor that the EU or the Republic should
tolerate this or go along with it. The fact that they did is, well, their bad. I'm still
shaking my head as to why Barnier et al were dumb enough to go along with it at the time.
There's probably a good reason we're not privy to.
A year or so ago there was a little discussion of this in some parts of the Irish media.
The thinking seemed to be that the government at the time (pre-Varadkar) had calculated that
it was too divisive (in terms of the potential impact on NI politics) to be seen to be taking
too aggressive a stance over Brexit (with hindsight, this was very naive, the DUP don't need
outside help to be divisive).
FG was also very worried about giving any electoral help to Sinn Fein.
With hindsight, I think this was a major miscalculation on a number of levels – I
don't think they anticipated that the stupidity of the London government would force them to
take such a strong stance on the border issue, they thought it could be finessed by way of
taking a more neutral stance.
I think these are May's options:
1. Canada+++ with backstop – the DUP say NO! and she loses a vote of confidence.
2. EFTA + EEA without CU – she comes back in triumph – "No CU!" – but she
loses DUP and Ultras so needs Corbyn, who will probably cry "No CU!" with contrary
sentiment.
3. CU with backstop – Labour says it fails test #2 (at least), but she hopes their
remainers defy the whip.
Labour could help vote through a {blind brexit' with an extended Transition} in exchange
for a post-deal General Election. This could suit May in that it would be risky for the
Tories to change leaders in an election atmosphere. The British Public can then decide WHO
best can negotiate the future Trade relationship (though sadly not the WHAT as it must be
negotiated).
You wonder what is in it for May to stay in her job as Prime Minister. All indications are
that she is a perfect example of the Peter Principle which is how she ended up with the job.
You think too that she would be tempted to chuck the whole business and say "Here Boris
– it's all yours!" with all the joy of throwing a live grenade. Maybe, in the end, it
is like Milton had Satan say once – "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven".
I don't believe it has occurred to May for one minute to resign or step aside. Power is
what drives people like her (i.e. almost all politicians). Its the nature of the beast.
Macron's official statement after the European Council is here Interestingly, only
about a third of the text was devoted to Brexit, and much of that was in turn a restatement
of EU priorities – especially unity and the Single Market – and confidence in
Barnier. All the technical solutions are known, said Macron, and it is for the UK to come up
with some new ideas for compromises. The hope was to reach an agreement in the next few
weeks, including "necessary guarantees for Ireland." The French media has essentially
confined itself to reporting what Macron said.
What this shows, I think, is an increasing irritation among European leaders that Brexit,
which should have been sorted out long ago, has been taking up the time that should really
have been devoted to more important subjects, like migration and the deepening of economic
and financial cooperation The British are regarded as a major irritant, incapable of behaving
like a great power, paralysed by internal political splits and capable of doing a lot of
collateral damage. The EU seems increasingly unwilling to devote any more time to Brexit
until the UK comes up with some genuinely useful ideas – hence the cancellation of the
November summit.
Thats probably true, but if so, its very shortsighted. If the UK crashes out, for several
months there will be nothing else on the plate of western Europe to deal with, there will be
deep implications certainly from Germany to Spain. And if it causes more wobbles in the
already very wobbly Italian banks, it'll be even more of a headache, to put it mildly.
I agree, but I think it's at least partly the UK's doing. A modicum of common sense and
political realism could have avoided this situation. The problem is that Brexit, as a
subject, has the nasty twin characteristics of being at once extremely complicated and
politically lunatic. I think EU leaders are focusing on the second, and in some ways May has
become almost light relief. But jokes stop being funny after a while, and I think Macron is
reflecting a wider belief among national leaders that only the UK can sort this out: you
broke it, you fix it.
If there were issues which, whilst difficult, were potentially fixable then I think a lot
more effort would have gone into the negotiations from EU leaders. But they must feel they
are trapped in some Ionesco farce or (to vary the metaphor) trying to negotiate with the
Keystone Cops.
Except the Keystone Cops happen to be playing with hand grenades. There's no doubt that
European leaders are taking a crash-out seriously (the French have published a draft bill
giving the government emergency powers to deal with such a situation) but I think there's a
also widespread sense of helplessness. What can the EU actually do that it hasn't already
done? All they can hope for is an outbreak of common sense in London, and I think we all know
how likely that is. In the circumstances, you might as well concentrate on subjects where
progress is actually possible.
Fascism is always eclectic and its doctrine is composed of several sometimes contradicting each other ideas. "Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..." (Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..."
)
Some ideas are "sound bite only" and never are implemented and are present only to attract sheeple (looks
National Socialist Program ). he program championed
the right to employment , and called for the institution of
profit sharing , confiscation of
war profits , prosecution of usurers and profiteers,
nationalization of trusts , communalization of department stores,
extension of the old-age pension system, creation of a
national education program of all classes, prohibition
of child labor , and an end to the dominance of
investment capital "
There is also "bait and switch" element in any fascism movement. Original fascism was strongly anti-capitalist, militaristic and
"national greatness and purity" movement ("Make Germany great again"). It was directed against financial oligarchy and anti-semantic
element in it was strong partially because it associated Jews with bankers and financial industry in general. In a way "Jews" were codeword
for investment bankers.
For example " Arbeit Macht Frei " can be viewed as
a neoliberal slogan. Then does not mean that neoliberalism. with its cult of productivity, is equal to fascism, but that neoliberal
doctrine does encompass elements of the fascist doctrine including strong state, "law and order" mentality and relentless propaganda.
The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so often that it lost its meaning. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) originated
as a working-class political party . This is not true about
Trump whom many assume of having fascist leanings. His pro white working class rhetoric was a fig leaf used for duration or elections.
After that he rules as a typical Republican president favoring big business. And as a typical neocon in foreign policy.
From this point of view Trump can't be viewed even as pro-fascist leader because first of all he does not have his own political
movement, ideology and political program. And the second he does not strive for implementing uniparty state and abolishing the elections
which is essential for fascism political platform, as fascist despise corrupt democracy and have a cult of strong leader.
All he can be called is neo-fascist s his some of his views do encompass ideas taken from fascist ideology (including "law and order";
which also is a cornerstone element of Republican ideology) as well as idealization and mystification of the US past. But with Bannon
gone he also can't even pretend that he represents some coherent political movement like "economic nationalism" -- kind of enhanced
mercantilism.
Of course, that does not mean that previous fascist leaders were bound by the fascism political program, but at least they had one.
Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that, "To [Hitler,
the program] was little more than an effective, persuasive propaganda weapon for mobilizing and manipulating the masses. Once it had
brought him to power, it became pure decoration: 'unalterable', yet unrealized in its demands for nationalization and expropriation,
for land reform and 'breaking the shackles of finance capital'. Yet it nonetheless fulfilled its role as backdrop and pseudo-theory,
against which the future dictator could unfold his rhetorical and dramatic talents."
Notable quotes:
"... Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago. ..."
"... Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals, its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present, these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics. ..."
"... In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence. ..."
"... fascist myths distinguish themselves with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests and civilization-building achievements. ..."
"... The function of the mythic past, in fascist politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle. ..."
It's in the name of tradition that the anti-Semites base their "point of view." It's in the name of tradition, the long, historical
past and the blood ties with Pascal and Descartes, that the Jews are told, you will never belong here.
-- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
It is only natural to begin this book where fascist politics invariably claims to discover its genesis: in the past. Fascist
politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously
pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist
mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago.
Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals,
its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present,
these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics.
In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal
cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the
face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence.
These myths are generally based on fantasies of a nonexistent past uniformity, which survives in the traditions of the small towns
and countrysides that remain relatively unpolluted by the liberal decadence of the cities. This uniformity -- linguistic, religious,
geographical, or ethnic -- can be perfectly ordinary in some nationalist movements, but fascist myths distinguish themselves
with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests
and civilization-building achievements. For example, in the fascist imagination, the past invariably involves traditional, patriarchal
gender roles. The fascist mythic past has a particular structure, which supports its authoritarian, hierarchical ideology. That past
societies were rarely as patriarchal -- or indeed as glorious -- as fascist ideology represents them as being is beside the point.
This imagined history provides proof to support the imposition of hierarchy in the present, and it dictates how contemporary society
should look and behave.
In a 1922 speech at the Fascist Congress in Naples, Benito Mussolini declared:
We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. . . . Our myth is
the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total
reality, we subordinate everything.
The patriarchal family is one ideal that fascist politicians intend to create in society -- or return to, as they claim. The patriarchal
family is always represented as a central part of the nation's traditions, diminished, even recently, by the advent of liberalism
and cosmopolitanism. But why is patriarchy so strategically central to fascist politics?
In a fascist society, the leader of the nation is analogous to the father in the traditional patriarchal family. The leader is
the father of his nation, and his strength and power are the source of his legal authority, just as the strength and power of the
father of the family in patriarchy are supposed to be the source of his ultimate moral authority over his children and wife. The
leader provides for his nation, just as in the traditional family the father is the provider. The patriarchal father's authority
derives from his strength, and strength is the chief authoritarian value. By representing the nation's past as one with a patriarchal
family structure, fascist politics connects nostalgia to a central organizing hierarchal authoritarian structure, one that finds
its purest representation in these norms.
Gregor Strasser was the National Socialist -- Nazi -- Reich propaganda chief in the 1920s, before the post was taken over by Joseph
Goebbels. According to Strasser, "for a man, military service is the most profound and valuable form of participation -- for the
woman it is motherhood!" Paula Siber, the acting head of the Association of German Women, in a 1933 document meant to reflect official
National Socialist state policy on women, declares that "to be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious
force of one's soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life . . . the highest calling of the National Socialist
woman is not just to bear children, but consciously and out of total devotion to her role and duty as mother to raise children for
her people." Richard Grunberger, a British historian of National Socialism, sums up "the kernel of Nazi thinking on the women's question"
as "a dogma of inequality between the sexes as immutable as that between the races." The historian Charu Gupta, in her 1991 article
"Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany," goes as far as to argue that "oppression of women in Nazi Germany in fact furnishes
the most extreme case of anti-feminism in the 20th century."
Here, Mussolini makes clear that the fascist mythic past is intentionally mythical. The function of the mythic past, in fascist
politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity,
and struggle.
With the creation of a mythic past, fascist politics creates a link between nostalgia and the realization of fascist ideals. German
fascists also clearly and explicitly appreciated this point about the strategic use of a mythological past. The leading Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg, editor of the prominent Nazi newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter, writes in 1924, "the understanding of and the
respect for our own mythological past and our own history will form the first condition for more firmly anchoring the coming generation
in the soil of Europe's original homeland." The fascist mythic past exists to aid in changing the present.
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished
Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of Know How; Languages in Context;
More about Jason Stanley
This could have been such a helpful, insightful book. The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so
often that it has started to lose its meaning. I hoped that this book would provide a historical perspective on fascism by examining
actual fascist governments and drawing some parallels to the more egregious / worrisome trends in US & European politics. The
chapter titles in the table of contents were promising:
- The Mythic Past
- Propaganda
- Anti-Intellectual
- Unreality
- Hierarchy
- Victimhood
- Law & Order
- Sexual Anxiety
- Sodom & Gomorrah
- Arbeit Macht Frei
Ironically (given the book's subtitle) the author used his book divisively: to laud his left-wing political views and demonize
virtually all distinctively right-wing views. He uses the term "liberal democracy" inconsistently throughout, disengenuously equivocating
between the meaning of "representative democracy as opposed to autocratic or oligarchic government" (which most readers would
agree is a good thing) and "American left-wing political views" (which he treats as equally self-evidently superior if you are
a right-thinking person). Virtually all American right-wing political views are presented in straw-man form, defined in such a
way that they fit his definition of fascist politics.
I was expecting there to be a pretty heavy smear-job on President Trump and his cronies (much of it richly deserved...the man's
demagoguery and autocratic tendencies are frightening), but for this to turn into "let's find a way to define virtually everything
the Republicans are and do as fascist politics" was massively disappointing. The absurdly biased portrayal of all things conservative
and constant hymns of praise to all things and all people left-wing buried some good historical research and valid parallels under
an avalanche of partisanism.
If you want a more historical, less partisan view of the rise of fascist politics, I would highly recommend Darkness Over Germany
by E. Amy Buller (Review Here). It was written during World War II (based on interviews with Germans before WWII), so you will
have to draw your own contemporary parallels...but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
At a minimum, it show that the EU's thumping of May at last month's Salzburg conference has
led to an uptick in activity, as the EU27 leaders set an earlier deadline for the UK to serve
up something realistic than the UK had previously thought it had (October versus November).
But it's far from clear that all the thrashing around and messaging amounts to progress. As
we'll discuss, some press reports claim the EU is showing more flexibility, but the changes
appear to be almost entirely cosmetic. If so, it would represent a cynical calculation that MPs
are so illiterate about technical details that adept repackaging will get the dog to eat the
dog food.
Another thing to keep in mind is that negotiators are always making progress until a deal is
dead. The appearance of momentum can create actual momentum, or at least buy time. But here,
time is running out, so the question is whether either side has made enough of a shift so as to
allow for a breakthough.
One thing that may have happened, and again this is speculative, is that more key players in
the EU are coming to realize that a crash out will inflict a lot of damage on the EU. A
transition period is actually much more beneficial to the EU than the UK. It would not only
allow the EU more time to prepare, but also enable it to better pick the UK clean of personnel
and business activities that can move to the Continent in relatively short order.
By contrast (and not enough people in the UK appear to have worked this out), the UK will
crash out with respect to the EU in either March 2019 or the end of December 2020. There's no
way the UK will have completed a trade deal with the EU by then, unless it accedes to every EU
demand. Recall that the comparatively uncomplicated Canada trade agreement took seven years to
negotiate and another year to obtain provisional approval. And Richard North points out another
impediment to negotiations: " .the Commission has to be re-appointed next year and, after
Brexit, it will not be fully in operation until the following November." Now there are still
some important advantages to securing a transition agreement, and they may be mainly political
(who wants to be caught holding that bag?) but the differences may not be as significant for
the EU as the UK. The UK will wind up having the dislocations somewhat spread out, first having
to contend with falling out of all the trade deals with third countries that it now has through
the EU in March 2019, and then losing its "single market" status with the EU at the end of
2020. But will the UK also be so preoccupied with trying to stitch up deals with the rest of
the world that it loses its already not great focus on what to do with the EU?
That isn't to say there won't be meaningful benefits to the UK if it can conclude a
Withdrawal Agreement with the EU and win a transition period. For instance, it has a dim hope
of being able to get its border IT systems upgraded so as to handle much greater transaction
volumes, a feat that seems pretty much unattainable by March 2019.
Two more cautionary note regarding these divergent news stories. The first is that we've
seen this sort of thing before and generally, the optimistic reports have not panned out.
However, they have generally ben from unnamed sources. While we do have a very thin BBC article with Jean-Claude
Junkcer saying the odds of a deal had improved and Tusk making cautiously optimistic noises,
Leo Vardarkar was more sober and the piece even admitted, "However, there is still no agreement
on some issues, including how to avoid new checks on the Irish border."
Second, they appear to be mainly about claimed progress or deadlocks on the trade front.
Recall that Article 50 makes only a passing reference to "the future relationship," which is
only a non-binding political declaration. However, these issue seems to have assumed more
importance than it should on the UK end, because it has become a forcing device for the
coalition to settle on what sort of Brexit it wants .and it remains fundamentally divided, as
demonstrated by last week's Conservative Party conference. By contrast, there seems to be
little news on the real sticking point, the Irish border.
First, recall that "Canada plus plus plus" has long been derided by the EU as yet another
way for the UK to try to cherry pick among the possible post-Brexit arrangements. Boris Johnson
nevertheless talked it up as a preferred option to May's too-soft Chequers scheme at the Tory
conference .
and May did not mention Chequers . Did EU pols take that to mean May had abandoned Chequers
to appease the Ultras?
However, as we read things (and we need to watch our for our priors), Donald Tusk appears to
be mouthing a pet UK expression to convey a different idea:
Tusk said the EU remained ready to offer the UK a "Canada-plus-plus-plus deal" – a
far-reaching trade accord with extra agreements on security and foreign policy.
That reads as a Canada style free trade agreement plus additional pacts on non-trade
matters. That is not what "Canada plus plus plus" signified on the UK side: it meant the UK
getting a free trade deal with other (typically not specified) goodies so as to make it
"special" and more important, reduce friction.
The Ultras were over the moon to have Tusk dignify Johnson's blather, even as the very next
paragraph of the Guardian story revealed the outtrade over what "Canada plus plus plus" stands
for:
Boris Johnson and other hard Brexit Tories seized on Tusk's remarks, arguing they showed
it was time for May to immediately switch tack and abandon her Chequers proposals for
remaining in a customs union for food and goods. "Tusk's Canada-plus-plus-plus offer shows
there is a superb way forward that can solve the Irish border problem and deliver a
free-trade-based partnership that works well for both sides of the channel," Johnson
said.
If you managed to get further into the story, it sounded more cautionary notes:
Some Brexiters overlook that the EU's version of a so-called Canada deal incorporates a
guarantee to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, which would keep Northern
Ireland in the EU customs union and single market. "Canada plus-plus-plus" is also a fuzzy
concept that has no formal status in EU negotiating documents. Michel Barnier, the bloc's
chief negotiator, mentioned the idea in an interview with the Guardian and other papers last
year.
"I don't know what Canada-plus-plus-plus means, it is just a concept at this stage,"
Varadkar said, adding that it did not negate the need for a "legally binding backstop"
– a guarantee to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland if there is no agreement
on the future trading relationship.
EU to let UK super fudge on "future relationship." Another Guardian story reported that the
EU might let the UK sign an even less committal version of the "future relationship"
section , allowing the UK to "evolve" [gah] its position during the transition period.
Frankly, this seems to be allowing for a change in government. I don't see this as that
meaningful a concession, since this statement was never legally binding. However, given that
Parliament must ratify the final agreement, formally registering that that section isn't set in
stone probably would facilitate passage as well as any future change in direction. And if you
suspect this is a big dog whistle to Labour, you be right:
An EU source said: "The message to Labour is that the UK could move up Barnier's stairs if
the British government changes its position in the transition period. Voting in favour of the
deal now would not be the last word on it."
May whips Labour for Chequers . You thought May gave up on Chequers? Silly you! She just had
the good sense to go into her famed submarine mode while Boris was having yet another turn in
the limelight.
From the Telegraph :
Ministers are in talks with as many as 25 Labour MPs to force through Theresa May's
Chequers Brexit deal risking open warfare with the party's own MPs.
The Government's whips' office has spent recent months making contact with the MPs as a
back-up option for when Theresa May's Brexit deal is put to a vote in Parliament in early
December, The Daily Telegraph has been told.
News of the wooing operation has infuriated Eurosceptic Tory MPs who are now threatening
to vote against elements of the Budget and other "money bills" to force Mrs May to drop her
Chequers plan.
If true, this is very high stakes poker. Brexit Central says there are 34 Tory MPs who have
already declared they will oppose any "deal based on Chequers". And, to change metaphors, they
appear ready to go nuclear if they have to. From the Times:
Brexiteers have issued a last-ditch threat to vote down the budget and destroy the
government unless Theresa May takes a tougher line with Brussels -- amid signs that she is on
course to secure a deal with the European Union.
Leading members of the hardline European Research Group (ERG) last night vowed to vote
down government legislation after it was claimed the prime minister will use Labour MPs to
push her plan through the Commons.
Reporting of the key issue of our times gets more bizarre by the day. The latest
contribution to the cacophony is the Telegraph, telling us that Ministers are in talks with
as many as 25 Labour MPs "to force through Theresa May's Chequers Brexit deal".
That approaches are being made to Labour MPs is not news, but the idea that attempts to
sell them the Chequers deal confounds recent indications that the prime minister is preparing
to roll out "Chequers II", with enough concessions to all the Commission to conclude a
withdrawal agreement.
If we are looking at such a new deal, then it cannot be the case that anyone is attempting
to convince Labour MPs of the merits of the old deal. And, even if Ministers succeeded in
such a task, it would be to no avail. Chequers, as such, will never come to parliament for
approval because it will never form the basis of a deal that can be accepted by Brussels.
That should consign the Telegraph story to the dustbin now piled high with incoherent
speculation, joining the steady flow of reports which are struggling – and failing
– to bring sense to Brexit.
EU to announce "minimalist" no-deal emergency plans . Interestingly, the Financial Times has
not had any articles in the last few days on the state of UK/EU negotiations. It instead
depicted the EU as about to turn up the heat on the UK by publishing a set of "no deal" damage
containment plans. I've never understood the line of thought, which seems to be taken seriously
on both sides of the table, that acting like a responsible government and preparing for a
worst-case scenario was somehow an underhanded negotiation ploy. 1 The pink paper
nevertheless pushes that notion:
Brussels is planning to rattle the UK by unveiling tough contingency measures for a
no-deal Brexit that could force flight cancellations and leave exporters facing massive
disruption if Britain departs the EU without an exit agreement in March.
Subtext: it's the EU's fault all those bad things could happen .when it is the UK that is
suing for divorce. Back to the story:
Against expectations in London, the plan is likely to encompass a limited number of
initiatives over a maximum of eight months, diplomats who have seen the document told the
Financial Times.
Notably, the EU is not planning special arrangements for customs or road transport and
only limited provisions for financial services -- a decision that, if seen through, would
cause long queues and operational difficulties at ports and airports.
The minimalist emergency plan, designed to be rolled out should there be no breakthrough
in Brexit talks, would increase the pressure over already fraught negotiations between the UK
and the EU ahead of a summit on 17 October. EU plans would then be firmed up by December
.
The commission has thus far resisted outlining details of its plans for a no-deal Brexit
for fear it would disrupt tense negotiations. But with just six months to go before Brexit,
EU member states have pressed Brussels to speed up its preparations in case no deal is agreed
in time.
Brussels will outline general principles for deciding the fields requiring special
measures, which must only mitigate significant disruptions in areas of "vital union
interest". The measures would be applied by the EU until the end of 2019 on a unilateral
basis. They could be revoked with no notice, according to diplomats.
The plans are intended to enable basic air services, allowing flights to land and fly
straight back to the UK, and to extend air safety certificates and security exemptions for UK
travellers in transit. Visa-free travel is envisaged for British citizens, as long as it is
reciprocated
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The commission has thus far resisted outlining details of its plans for a no-deal Brexit
for fear it would disrupt tense negotiations. But with just six months to go before Brexit,
EU member states have pressed Brussels to speed up its preparations in case no deal is agreed
in time.
Brussels will outline general principles for deciding the fields requiring special
measures, which must only mitigate significant disruptions in areas of "vital union
interest". The measures would be applied by the EU until the end of 2019 on a unilateral
basis. They could be revoked with no notice, according to diplomats.
The plans are intended to enable basic air services, allowing flights to land and fly
straight back to the UK, and to extend air safety certificates and security exemptions for UK
travellers in transit. Visa-free travel is envisaged for British citizens, as long as it is
reciprocated.
Hopes of progress have been fuelled by expectations that Theresa May has come forward with
a compromise solution to the Irish border.
The PM will propose keeping the whole of the UK in a customs union as a final fallback but
allowing Northern Ireland to stick to EU regulations.
The EU has rejected having the UK collect EU customs post Brexit. Moreover, a customs union,
as we've said repeatedly, does not give the UK its keenly-sounght frictionless trade. Making
Northern Ireland subject to EU regulations means accepting the jurisdiction of the ECJ, since
compliance is not a matter of having a dusty rule book, but of being part of the same
regulatory apparatus. Aside from the fact that this solution won't be acceptable to the DUP, it
would also result in a hard land border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
So are we to take this as incomprehension on the part of the Sun's reporters, or that the
Government's negotiators continue to be as thick as a brick? Sadly,
the Guardian tells a similar tale :
Ministers expect to discuss Brexit in a week's time when some hope that officials will
have clarified how the UK proposes to handle cross-border regulatory checks if no progress is
made on agreeing a free trade deal with the EU.
There has been speculation that this solution could involve the whole of the UK agreeing
to be part of a common customs area with the EU in order to avoid the possibility of an
invisible border separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain, in the event that no
long-term deal is signed.
Richard North has the best take. He points the rumors from the UK side come from people who
present themselves as being on the inside but probably aren't, or not enough to have a good
feel, and
continues :
Yet nothing seems to be leaking from No.10, with officials saying merely that proposals
would emerge "soon". Says the Guardian, these are likely to form the basis of technical
negotiations with Brussels "as officials scramble to find a form of words for the withdrawal
agreement that the UK proposes to sign with the EU".
Any such timing will, of necessity, rule out any formal consideration by the October
European Council. Those who understand the detail will know that, before anything can be
considered by the European Council, it must first be agreed by the General Affairs Council,
meeting as 27.
Currently, this is scheduled for 16 October (Tuesday week) – a day before the
Article 50 European Council which starts its two-day session on the 17th. On the face of it,
there doesn't seem to be enough time to factor in any last-minute proposals from London,
especially as details must first be circulated to Member State capitals for comment.
This does nothing, though, but confirm that which we already know – that if there is
to be a final showdown, then it is going to come at the special meeting in November (if this
actually happens), or even the meeting scheduled for 13-14 December.
Even the rumor mills don't give much reason to think there is a solution to the Irish
border. If May really hasn't abandoned Chequers, all the fudging to come up with a content-free
"future relationship" section will be to the detriment of UK citizens, since the Government
will keep holding on to a Brexit plan that the EU will never accept. But the best interests of
ordinary people have gotten short shrift all along.
strip away the right of Corprati0ns to have the legal standing of a person in a Court of
Law .
when we could just abolish the institution of incorporation without remorse? This
would like treating a cause of widespread disease with an ounce of inexpensive
prevention.
Buh-bye limited liability parasitism. Buh-bye rootless, world-wandering capital with scant
interest in the hosts' long-term wellbeing.
I suppose that there would be a shrill outcry of protest from the many little fire teams,
squads, and platoons of mind rapists (e.g. A. Cockburn) who have a career interest in
complaining for a living. But so what? It would be fun to watch "social justice" factions
twist and squirm as a chorus of abolitionists asks why the "Resistance" never resisted
"corporatocracy" with abolitionism. The rapists will "spew" much sanctimonious b.s.
defensively between artful meals in nice restaurants, but the chorus will know a real
reason. Lefty humanist finds incorporation very useful for cultivating the intense
concentration of wealth and power which he pretends to oppose.
Eventually the chorus will get around to asking lefty internationalist about his
contemporary plans to merge every firm with government without looking like an old fashioned
commie expropriationist. The chorus might ask the mind rapists still more embarassing
questions:
Righteous Lefty, why would you establish incorporation now if it wasn't a feature of
commerce already? Because you would not then have a little handful of company shares to
trade in a stock exchange? Nor be planning to exploit a stock tip from an ally who is
married to a corporate go-getter with C-level knowledge of plans?
Traditional labor unions, TOO, have been involved with the racketeering of incorporation.
Take the UMWA, for example. Where in the eleven points of its constitution is there any hint
that labor organizers and their Blair Mountain warriors were thinking about abolishing a
pernicious institution which had done so much to slant market power in favor of neverlaboring
mine operators?
It's been obvious for some time that the allegedly right wing "ALT RIGHT" is another
faction with little interest in getting rid of the corporation. It is sympathetic,
however, to old fashioned communist schemes like "Social Security" and communist health care
finance. So what, um, pecuniary interest does its leading lights have in maintaining the
incorporated status quo? Explain, please.
Well, I don't know. My sister is an executive assistant. I thought I knew what that meant and
you probably do too. But then one day I sat down with her and we actually talked about her
job, and I quickly realized that not only was my understanding of her job so shallow as to be
effectively meaningless, but it was so shallow that I didn't even understand how much I was
missing. I'd just glanced at the title and said to myself "yep, executive assistant, assist
executives, that's what she does" and at no point had it ever even occurred to me that there
was anything past that. In fact, it was even worse than that, because half the stuff I
imagined she might do wasn't part of her job at all (hint, if you think "executive assistant"
and "secretary" are remotely similar you are just as far off track as I was).
I still don't understand what she does but at least now I know how little I know. If she
came to me for career advice there's no chance I'd be able to offer her anything other than
meaningless platitudes, because I don't even know enough right now to know if her current job
is a good one or a bad one. If she'd asked me before I realized how much I don't know I'd be
in the same boat, only probably rolling my eyes that she would get so worked up over x, y, or
z when her job was so simple and straightforward that there's no possible way it could be
that stressful.
Yeah.
All of this is to say that unless your friends are on a career path similar to yours they
probably not only fail to understand your job, but they probably fail so bad that they don't
even know how far off they are. That's not because your friends are stupid or because IT is
so impenetrably complex that only the chosen few can grasp it; its just that most of us don't
have a lot of expertise in careers outside of our own. Lacking context, we turn to pop
culture for reference. Picture the stereotypical Hollywood "computer guy" (or, if you must,
"hacker"). That's probably what your friends think your job is like. Now imagine that guy
coming to you complaining about how hard and stressful his job is. How hard could it be
anyway? I have a computer at home and don't have to do much to keep it running. These things
all basically run themselves, don't they?
So, point is his friends aren't necessarily assholes or in denial. They probably just
don't know enough to understand how little they know, as is true for all of us, and are
trying to give well-intentioned advice; OP asked, after all, and they want to help their
friend. But you can't give good advice if you don't have all the facts, and especially not if
you don't even know how much you're missing.
The executive assistants I know (to VPs, presidents, CEOs) practically run the company. Not
entirely, but a good chunk of it.
Filter what their executive knows and doesn't know, what meetings that take and don't,
and what their priorities are. If the EA isn't on your side, you're not getting to their
exec.
This influences strategy for the company, which means the EA is often helping direct
strategy.
Because they are spending 100% of their time with the exec (compared to the, say, 2
hours I get every other month as one of the department heads), they have a huge amount of
influence. They are trusted. And they have heard about everything that is happening at the
company. They know more than I do about what's really happening.
As to what they do, on the surface, it does look like secretary work. Schedule
appointments. Schedule venues for meetings/conferences. Book travel. Make sure the exec is
prepared for the appointments (knows what they need to know; has met with the right people in
advance to get briefed; leaves on time to get to the appointment). Answer emails and phone
calls.
But the level of knowledge they need to perform those tasks for an executive is much
higher.
Well, sure, that's an unfortunate commute. You're basically saying "I would take getting paid
for X for y hours of work over getting paid (x - costs of transportation ) for y + 4.5 or
more hours of work.
It's a decent jumping-off point for a middle management role of your own, if one opens up at
the same company. You're playing a huge role in running your exec's department
already, so you've got the lay of the land and you're clearly a competent wrangler of humans.
Who promoted herself from Harvey's legal secretary to the COO in a span of two episodes,
didn't skip a beat, and kept doing exactly what she was doing before.
Well, seeing as my last post was a big long thing about how I don't fully understand what
they do this is a limited view, but a short pithy summary would be that she handles all the
stuff her boss should be doing but doesn't have time to actually do. That's everything from
negotiating phone plans and insurance rates to making sure all the certifications and permits
they need to function are taken care of to planning and booking meetings and seminars. It's
very wide ranging and is a ton of responsibility. As noted elsewhere a good EA practically
runs the company.
I work from home 2 days a week. My wife thought I was nuts when I brought home a gaming
headset and 2nd monitor for the PC I use at home.
She thought I was sitting at home playing minecraft all day.
The reality is I need lots of screen space to doy job and I have conference call meetings
several times a day. I can actually hear and be heard with the headset.
I agree the downside is getting tagged for late day or after hours emergency work because
I can respond quickly.
I ended up buying an egpu so I could hook up a third monitor to my laptop. Currently trying
to figure out how to arrange stuff on my desk to fit a fourth; may have to start mounting
them on swivel arms. I want as much screen space as I can get when I doy job.
I also have an hdmi switch to change the monitors to my gaming machine when it's Minecraft
time. Tax deductible 4k 27 " monitors are good for that too.
Got a stud above/behind your desk? The fourth one on the wall angled down can work pretty
well, throw your notifications bar up there, calendar, anything you rarely glance at but
should be able to see without moving another program or window.
All of these makes sense, but I am just going to add the following: - Your friends should
recognize if you are yourself or if you are frustrated, close to being burned out. That is a
clear indicator if you are at right job or not. - Your friends should also be able to help
you figure out if you are appreciated and in a company with good culture
Good companies/management do everything they can to empower employees, provide adequate
training, and set realistic expectations. All of that increases employees' morale and
confidence. Without those two, company is bound to fail sooner or later.
Your friends should recognize if you are yourself or if you are frustrated, close to
being burned out. That is a clear indicator if you are at right job or not.
Your friends should also be able to help you figure out if you are appreciated and in
a company with good culture
And, as your friend, you might want to listen to us if we point out these things more than
a few times. There are one off vent sessions over a beer then there are long-term, consistent
complaints.
Yes, sometimes you just want to vent, but if someone is pointing out the same thing
constantly, they may have a point and it's up to you to start on a path to changing the
situation.
This. Many resources out there clearly state that your friends either support your success or
place negative labels on your success.
Go check out 7 habits of highly effective peeps. Will give you a completely new
perspective. Not just about friends but yourself and how you interact with others.
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No, he just needs to understand that people give generic advice that they think sounds good
but they really don't understand your job or have never been in your situation. And he does.
Being able to empathize with your friends concerns, to understand their feelings without
understanding exactly what they're going through, is a talent that not everybody has. Neither
is being self-aware enough to recognize when you lack such a talent and instead say "wow,
that sounds tough, I don't have any advice, but good luck." But these are not the only
attributes that make someone friend-worthy.
On the other hand, not everybody can tolerate having friends that lack empathy and
understanding. So for some the answer "they need new friends" may be true, I just don't think
OP necessarily does. In fact, I think it's the same kind of generic, bad advice that I'm
talking about to say that he does.
Neither is being self-aware enough to recognize when you lack such a talent and instead
say "wow, that sounds tough, I don't have any advice, but good luck."
When I'm in situations like this (I can't advise because I lack context or experience) I
advise flipping a coin. Quit after finding a new job or stay and keep trying to change the
place, heads or tails. After you've flipped the coin and seen the result, examine your
feeling... disappointed or relieved? There's your answer regardless of the coin toss you know
how you really feel, and should trust your gut.
This! When my friend(s) complain about their current workplace/position/etc I always
recommend they get their feelers out and start looking. It may take a while but you'll
eventually find something.
It took me almost a year to find something comparable or better but didn't land the final
interview this past year. But, my old job lost our largest client and I am now working for
said client. Couldn't be happier!
You don't know what someone deals with & those people may want to bend over backward to
help this person if they could. Don't automatically label them shitty friends. You don't even
know them.
No. I trust them and usually come to them when I'm emotionally invested/upset and yelling
about a situation at work. Making decisions in this mindset is always a bad idea. I was
talked off a ledge long enough to make a smart, calculated decision.
You probably figured this out already, but the whole "go hire someone" thing was a ploy to
keep you around a little longer. They gave you permission to recruit, not authority to hire.
They were never going to green light the position.
You also facilitated management's bad behavior by putting too much effort into doing the
right thing. You weren't valued or appreciated, you were just taken advantage of.
Spot on. I was given the illusion of great authority, but in the end - not on the things that
matter. I borderline want to say the word 'budget' doesn't exist here.
This. Why would they hire someone when you're doing it all. IT employees have a much better
stress level, work life balance, and career when they learn how to say no or "that's not my
role". Unless you're trying to get into that area, never volunteer you do work that should be
done by another area. It'll start becoming the norm and will never stop. Good luck on your
next gig though!
Yeah. I learned at my old job that the "what can we do to keep you?" question is bullshit.
It's a way for them to determine what they can lie to your face about to string you along as
far as possible. I asked for a team change, and they managed to string me along saying I was
approved for almost 9 months, until suddenly I'm not approved anymore and there's not even a
spot open for me.
Never again will I attempt to be honest with my manager. You can know that I'm thinking
about leaving when I give you my 2 weeks notice.
Thanks for the story, and the perspective. I'm the sole SA at a smallish entertainment-based
development studio, didn't understand half the tech you reference and I do have a senior
network architect I can (remotely) fall back on, but many days I'm totally overwhelmed. We
had a major product success last year and we've been ramping up like crazy. More office
rollout, more servers, more users, more developers (so like users but worse), more backup
needs, more bandwidth, more "and can you get better teleconference speakers for the meeting
rooms", more baroque software licensing to figure out, also do I have batteries? Mouse pads?
Highlighters? Why are you asking me for highlighters? No I can't fix your chair. Etc etc. And
I'm waiting for that one crucial system to break that I won't know how to fix.
I guess I'm just saying your post gave me some much-needed perspective. Cheers.
The best time to look for a job is when you don't need a job
Hell yeah! I quit about 6 months ago and don't even look. I get sporadic emails from
LinkedIn and other avenues and if things look good, I'll apply, otherwise the hell with it.
I've had a few interviews but sadly most places look like they have issues with
understaffing, overworked, etc.
Ah well, in the next few years I'm sure something good comes up.
Had my jr get assigned 2 more standing desks this week (about 8 installed in the last 2
months and I guess we literally can't trust someone to unplug their 3 cables from the little
NUC...). I wrote him an email discussing the core parts of his job and how no one cares about
how many standing desks are or are not installed at any given time. Focus on doing your job
well, please talk to me or CIO if you are getting stressed by any workload (we all know that
sometimes it feels like the tickets just stream in and you make no headway no matter what you
do). We'll do whatever is needed to either take care of em.
I have also done some stand up desk troubleshooting and installation, if it has a wire in it
or on it, or even holds something with a sufficient number of wires people can claim it is
confusing, it's your problem. 15 years of working in the IT/SA field and I'm unboxing a desk
because 'my computer has all the wires and I'll probably just mess it up if I try to move
everything myself'. Fortunately our users are very reasonable in general.
How about one of those tiny space heaters? A user asked me if I could figure out why it
wasn't working, and all I did was flip a big red switch marked "ON."
Start to say no. Do the hours in your contract and go home. When stuff doesn't get done tell
them you need more people. Either they get more people or you search for a new job. But if
they don't get more people you would search for a new job anyway. Just burned out.
Seems to me like a lot of horror stories here are because people either care too much or
are deeply afraid of looking for a new job. These conditions exist because you let them.
Years ago a manager from a different department (non IT obviously) walked over to us to let
us know a toilet was clogged. We all just looked at him and laughed. I was also yelled at
once for not helping someone move a file cabinet during an office move, while we still had
tons of PC's left to setup.
IT has always been the "well, we don't have above whose responsibility it is to take care
of this, so IT can do it" field.
I'm going through a similar situation to you OP but for a different reason.
I left a good MSP job (busy and at times frustrating) for a larger employer and the job I
was expecting to have is not at all like the one I applied for it's very boring and quite
slow with too much idle time sometimes which is weird since it's an operations roles for a
billion dollar business but probably half of the "work" I'm doing now is "hey sorry to wake
you but we got this alarm and we've raised an incicent can you take a look" when I used to
design and manage environments end to end.
My job for some people would be the jackpot but for me it's awful and I'm considering
leaving to go back to my way more stressful MSP job.
My problem is I have too many resources to call on (multiple teams to escalate to) and I'm
just left watching the screens because of it.
This is what I'm afraid of as well but I need more friggin money. The screen watchers
actually make more because they exist in big companies with lots of money.
We definantely do some automation but maybe not enough.
The alarms are mostly validation checks (is it actually p1? Is that event due to a
change?) and anything that can be automated is and we don't get alerts for it.
Our alarm dashboard is an aggregator of a ton of systems that all send their alarms to
it.
Unfortunately once the infrastructure and databases become self healing we're all out of a
job.
Same boat here. "is this really going to happen again before this system is decommed?" Should
I spend a few hours making a good test that will determine if its really this problem again
and fixing it + reporting the result of the fix? Or should I spend the 6 minutes it takes to
fix this and move on with my life.
Re: Self healing - out of a job. Oh PLEASE! We're not out of a job when stuff is self
healing; we're into a new one. I'm just a regular sys admin and even I am starting to think
about how I can use machine learning to solve issues I face or to improve our business. It'll
be QUITE some time before I actually start doing anthing with ML, let alone something useful.
I'd LOVE to have more time to play with new stuff.
We use ansible for automation. I do love it but it's fairly time consuming to setup (half the
stuff is in a txt doc waiting for a playbook to be built)
Management jobs usually require some management experience and I have a little bit of team
leading experience but not the sort of "manage this budget and this department" management
experience I'm also torn between making that jump to management and getting "off the tools"
or doing a deep dive into a specific set of technical tools.
My dad was an engineer for various semiconductor factories for years. He hit that same point
in his role - but there was a much bigger push to go to management, which he did. after about
5 years of that he quit - he was way to burnt out and hasn't returned to corporate life
since. The money was good but the job wasn't worth it.
Hell, the only job he's had in years was as a general contractor putting in sinks and
stuff making what I do as a help desk monkey.
I'm sort of going into a remote management position. Working for a MSP as problem escalation
for 8 techs. Finding 'teachable moments' (probably all of them!) to train on troubleshooting
process. In my spare time I'll be getting amazon aws certs and I'll eventually move into a
different role. Sounds challenging enough not to be bored :)
Oh I can do their jobs they're like "tier 3" while we're "tier 2" and we can do actual work
(permissions allowing) our team holds the same level of certs they do (MCSA, MCSE etc) were
just in at a different layer of the business which is changing.
I don't just watch for alarms and escalate it's just a small part of the role really but
it's the most prominent part when you're on the graveyards which always makes me a bit
resentful of my own choice to come here.
No, he said he had to sweep snow off a satellite dish because it's heater was broke. He said
nothing about being on the roof. Sweeping dishes after a heavy snowfall is not uncommon. I
had to do the same thing this morning while on-call.
I work in a small environment incredibly similar to OP's, Calix, Metaswitch, etc. We have
a SME for each area; one for voice, one for IP/IT systems (me), one for video, and two
outside plant guys. We cover/triage each others duties during on-call rotation. It works well
enough for us, but sounds like OP is doing it all. It would be one thing if he had to only
deal with the non-IT stuff on occasion, but if all those responsibilities are solely his,
thats untenable.
If it's a small company everyone needs to chip in beyond their official responsibility to
make things work, but they also need to be compensated at the rate of their top skills and
not driven into the ground. IMO
The problem here is that you kept the ship running, even though you told management you
needed help, things were still getting done.
Management will not do anything about thing until they break, so while you bust your ass
keeping things going they don't care how you did it. All they know is things are still
running.
You either have to show them things breaking or put your foot down negotiate a commitment to
hire a hand.
Just out of interest what was their reaction when you handed in your notice? Did they counter
or they simply decided to hire a replacement. They must have been in a world of hurt if it
was the latter and you were the only one doing that role.
Yep, a recruiter bringing someone in will cost 15-25k. Giving someone an internal referral
for 7k is comparative peanuts, AND you get two happy employees because of that.
Heya, I don't know how far into your career you are, but I'm 45, pretty senior level (I've
been a c-level exec) and wanted to tell you:
Don't ever compromise. Ever.
I am in a similar situation at an MSP (I'm in a leadership role) and have the same kinds
of conversations about resources and losing valuable workers because there's no help. The
management above me isn't listening and we are going to lose a very fine employee (like
yourself -- someone with skill who is trying to make it better but is not being
heard -- and it's because management don't know how to run an ITIL-based shop and hire to
that kind of skill set. I put toghether a framework to measure qualifications of our
employees and they all measure up to Tier 1 analysts/engineers (in both experience and quals)
and some of them are considered Tier 3 employees and they can't do something as simple as
read and interpret a Wireshark packet capture. And I keep being told either "we have to make
do with what we have" or "you're not seeing what good they can do". So clearly in my case
there's a division in vision for leadership and I'm giving up and probably moving on. In your
case, you tried, gave your input, and, if they're not gonna listen to you, move on. Your
expectations are NOT too high. Their expectations aren't high enough. Move on to somewhere
there's a fit. You can only help someone from burning their hand on the stove so many times
before you give up and go watch TV.
Yes. They all are 6 months to 1 year out of technical school. They are able to accomplish
SOME tasks. They are unskilled at anything above Tier 1 despite someone saying "you know
about X. Here, go do it."
For instance, a windows admin should be able to implement GPO and know what it's about.
Maybe have an MS cert. but our main windows admin is working towards his CCNA and has been
out of school for 6 months. Not exactly a right fit for that job.
I've been in a similar situation, the problem is not necessarily an issue with vision. More
than likely upper management have been given the mandate to keep costs down or at least
same.
So they will come up with any excuse not to hire more people or if someone of good quality
leaves they will only hire someone lower quality i.e. lower pay.
That is the problem with corporate culture everyone is there looking only after number one,
as long as the job is getting done they don't care how much those doing it care about the
company or that they are doing their jobs efficiently, cost effective or to a high
standard.
All they care about is that the job is getting done.
Stories like this is why I gave up trying. Used to, I would change my plans to do a last
minute cutover on the weekend because you changed the date 3 different times. These days, my
response is always, "I have an opening 3 weeks from now".....because I don't let it fuck up
my life anymore. Frankly, nothing has happened since I started giving those answers. What are
they going to do anyways? Hire someone else? pffft.
Christ, I felt bad for myself when I quit MY job but goddamn, you were in a
shithole! Glad you found something better.
I still hear from people at my old job that nothing has changed. They hire someone else
but never fix the problems. Overworked, understaffed, complaints are listened too with great
concern and then ignored.
It does sound very much like they're, perhaps unwittingly, taking advantage of you and you're
right to want to leave a job that's damaging your life so terribly.
I mean, works sucks most of the time, but it doesn't have to suck ALL the time and there
should be at least enough people to have the work ease off from time to time or you just go
manic from the stress.
Everybody expects different things from their job and not all jobs are right for all
people. IMO, life is too short to spend it doing a job you hate or working in a toxic
environment. I applaud your efforts to try and improve things but ultimately you've got to
draw a line where enough is enough and just move on. Do what's right by you, because your
company is working every day to do what's right by them and not necessarily what's good for
you.
Something sounds off. You talked to the ceo about what they can do, and they have their own
headend, but won't outsource the printers? That's always the first thing that needs to be
sourced out because it's petty shit like toner or pain in ass like the fuser.
Sounds like they needed someone to streamline the processes, and have 2-3 more people on
board. A senior network guy and two more minions eager to learn and take those 'patch cable
broken' or port security tickets.
You were used hard and long and have been fed bad advice. You should have left that place
long ago and hopefully this lesson will stick with you forever.
The same two questions, every time, before you go looking. And then the third, when you have
an offer on the table (sometimes it's one you went looking for, sometimes it's one that just
appeared in your inbox).
Are you happy? If not, why not?
Will a different job make you happier?
Will this opportunity make you happier?
Sometimes the problem is at home, and changing your work life might help (if it brings
more money or a shorter commute), and sometimes it won't. Sometimes the problem is at work,
and you can influence change either within the organization or within yourself (changing your
expectations, adjusting your work schedule to be earlier or later, discussing with your
management group about changes to your role, etc) in order to improve the situation. Or you
improve your work situation by leaving it behind, if there is no way to improve it or the
people who can help improve it are unwilling (or themselves unable) to do so.
Yes, sometimes the easy opportunities for change just aren't there, and you need to make
harder decisions about the change your life needs. In those moments one should be grateful
for what they have, but it doesn't necessarily mean they should accept that this is their lot
in life. Maybe you need to move. Maybe you're looking for a remote position. Maybe you take
the plunge and live off savings for a few months -- though unless you're on the verge of a
breakdown, this can cause complications later; it's generally true that it is easier to find
a job if you have a job. Not universally, but generally. Maybe you give up IT and become a
Birthday Clown, because you enjoy making children happy more than you enjoy clicking buttons
anymore.
Best of luck to you in your new place, hopefully it works out!
Are your friends in IT in any way? I find that most people have no idea what IT means, or the
individual fields. They expect the same person who helps them with spreadsheets also
makes/updates the websites, sets up the phone system, maintains the network.. and may even
think they plug in their power bar. Most people can't discern the difference between
facilities, an electrician and someone in one of the many fields of IT in my experience.
Heck, at my company the executives have no idea what I do. They ask me to do things from
investigate and roll out MDM.. to go to one of our communities and setup one of the
resident's televisions. I've even been asked to install generator power outlets.. I've just
learned to say "no" and explain to them who's responsibility it is. If they are unwilling to
hire someone or even just bring the proper person from within the organization, the problem
can stay a problem.
Your friends may not be crappy, they might just be clueless.
The CEO found out and we sat down ... He puts that responsibility on me.
I've seen my own managers do the same, and still am thinking through if, when and how it's
a mistake. Managers are there to support and enable important things happening. If it's a
small thing then all they need to do is give you permission to do it. But if it's a big thing
then they need to mange it, e.g track it, ask how it's going, ask what you need, get
other people involved, set priorities etc. Not just give a pep talk, say "it's on you now"
and wash hands of it. That basically means, "cheer up, but I don't care". If I wanted someone
to listen carefully and then do nothing about it I'd go to therapy, thanks.
Being that IT is generally a self-taught field, where we can play around with and test things
before doing them in production...
I recommend sticking to jobs where you're doing commonly reproducible/testable software
stuff. i.e. standard Windows/Linux servers + standard software. Basically things that can be
completely learned and tested in virtual machines, without needing any special hardware at
all.
I reckon all the proprietary "black box" / vendor specific devices etc you mentioned make
working in "IT" much much more stressful. You basically have to learn a whole heap of
different systems where what you learn is only applicable to one device. And you can't easily
play around with them like you can with pure software and virtual machines etc. So you're
often learning & testing in production, and even then, only once something has already
failed. And you're likely not going to have spare parts, or even be able to get them easily.
The same goes for network engineers dealing with lots of cisco routers etc to a certain
degree. Basically anything that involves hardware except for standard PCs and servers running
Windows or Linux.
I worked for a post-production company for a while, and yeah it was similar. I was busy as
fuck with the regular standard everyday IT shit, yet still had the responsibly to figure out
all there proprietary devices etc that I'd never even heard of before. And because they're
not commonplace IT stuff, there's fuckall information on the internet to learn about them and
troubleshoot etc. And of course learning about that shit doesn't translate into useful skills
you can take elsewhere in other IT jobs.
So yeah these days, I'm 100% software. I actually do IT consulting part time, and even
when my clients want to buy hardware, I just give them some recommendations and get them to
order it directly from Dell or whoever. I don't want to be responsible for hardware failures,
of which I have zero control over.
OP I'm in the same boat. COO found out that my medial issues I may jump ship. Had a chat and
he said he would do everything to get people hired. My boss has had approval for hiring for
weeks now and not one person has been interviewed. I have also been thinking about getting
medicated because I'm in denial with work. I'm going to jump ship soon take time off and see
what happens.
That is what MSP is. MSP is the environment where self-driven, stoic people survive and other
people crumble. MSP is especially tough in the role like yours as you have no one to rely on
anymore, but everyone else is coming to you to fix a problem they can't figure out. I am
there, been there for awhile. People think you are smarter than them, but all you are is more
persistent and willing to sacrifice your sanity and your free time to figure out a problem by
going to 10th page of google and performing advanced search queries on reddit.
I think MSP life after age of 35 is impossible to do unless you are crazy. :)
You were in an impossible situation with really shit poor management. Don't waste a second
thought. They'll either figure out why they can't keep people or they'll fail in spectacular
fashion. The bottom line is you have to protect yourself and your interests, you owe that
company nothing. The only time you owe a company that isn't your own is if the company makes
significant investment in your and your career, which your former company clearly didn't.
Good for you on recognizing that you had options. In many ways in that former situation you
were the one with the power and its great that you exercised it.
I went through practically the same thing. Found a nice job down the street from my house I
could just walk to. They had a full web team to handle all their websites and web problems,
but their skills were about 20 years old. At first I didn't notice because I would handle IT
/ network problems all day.
Then eventually I started getting web site issues pushed to me, then web design issues.
Eventually I was building all their web sites and running their entire web platform while
everyone else on that team just sat around all day making emails. All this extra work never
came with any pay increase and everyone would always say "You do everything here, if you
leave we're screwed".
A day came when there was a landslide of issues combined with an HR nightmare and nobody
seemed to wanted to handle anything. By the end of the day I realized I had wanted to leave
the job for over a year and I was only staying to keep things together until I got everything
to a stable point. Unfortunately this place could never reach a stable point because their
management was an absolute shit show and never wanted to step up to face any big
problems.
This seems really common after reading some stories here. A good amount of IT people
probably feel obligated to keep things running even when they hate their job.
I also found a remote job with a ridiculous salary increase after going through so many
interviews to the point of utter mental exhaustion. The grass definitely can be greener
sometimes its just much harder to find than you would ever think.
Iberiano says:
September 29, 2018 at 11:47 am GMT 300 Words Looking at that photo of the former primary
contenders, reminded me of all the holier-than-though talk we got from the right-of-center,
about how Trump was too gruff, and crass, about everything, including sexual topics,
interactions with women, etc.
What these hearings demonstrated, that we already knew, was that the Puritan-Jew alliance is
obsessed with all things sexual, perverted, distasteful theirs is a world of, as you
point out, "preppy white boy" fantasies, where the bad guys look like the blond jock in Karate
Kid, and drive around in their Dad's 1982 Buick Regal or their own '79 Camero, looking to
"score" with virginal know-nothing, Red Riding Hoods, that happen to find themselves at 'gang
rape parties' (?), out of nowhere. Who go on to have Leftist careers only to resurrect
repressed memories 35 years later–projected in front of the world
It's a silly framework from which they obsess, but it's similar to Kinsey, Mead and others
of the Left. Sex. Projection, doubling-down, and an absence of due process to punish people for
the very things that actually occupy their minds. Even in her advanced age, you could
tell, Feinstein was enjoying the open air discussions regarding sexual topics.
Let the Right / Never-Trumpers be on notice–Trump is light fare compared to where the
Left will go and has been, regarding women, sex, and all things crass.
"UK Prime Minister Theresa May suffered political humiliation in Salzburg, when European
Union (EU) leaders rebuffed her appeal to give at least conditional support to her Chequers
proposal for a "soft Brexit."
May was given only 10 minutes to address EU heads of state Wednesday, after dinner at the
informal summit, during which she appealed to her audience, "You are participants in our
debate, not just observers."
She said she had counted on at least supportive noises for her "serious and workable"
plan, given that she was seeking to head off a potential challenge from the
"hard-Brexit"/Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party. She warned that the UK could be
torn apart -- with respect to Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as by social tensions;
that if her government fell, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party could win a general election; and
cited the potential damage to the EU itself of lost trade, investment and military support
from the UK.
Instead, her address was met with silence and her implied threats were stonewalled, as the
main players within the EU combined the next day to declare her proposals to be
"unworkable.
No matter how these conflicts play out, Britain and the whole of Europe face a worsening
crisis that threatens to tear the EU apart. The growth of both inter-imperialist and social
antagonisms found dramatic form in Brexit, which the dominant sections of the City of London,
big business, all the major parties and Britain's allies in the US and Europe all opposed.
Yet two years later, May is fighting a desperate struggle against her anti-EU "hard-Brexit"
faction, the US is led by a president who has declared his support for the breakup of the EU,
and numerous far-right governments have taken power in part by exploiting popular hostility
to EU-dictated austerity."
"worsening crisis that threatens to tear the EU-(and hence NATO)- apart. " .
A confidential report by Belgian investigators confirms that British intelligence services
hacked state-owned Belgian telecom giant Belgacom on behalf of Washington, it was revealed on
Thursday (20 September).
The report, which summarises a five-year judicial inquiry, is almost complete and was
submitted to the office of Justice Minister Koen Geens, a source close to the case told AFP,
confirming Belgian press reports
The matter will now be discussed within Belgium's National Security Council, which
includes the Belgian Prime Minister with top security ministers and officials.
Contacted by AFP, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office and the cabinet of Minister
Geens refused to comment .
####
NO. Shit. Sherlock.
So the real question is that if this has known since 2013, why now? BREXIT?
"... The EU is not perfect and has costs, but measured against what it has achieved, it is a great success. ..."
"... The EU has brought peace to Europe for the longest period since Pax Romana (and that was not entirely peaceful). ..."
"... You're funny. The EU makes war by other means. The burden of disease in Greece, health loss, risk factors, and health financing, 2000–16: an analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpub/PIIS2468-2667(18)30130-0.pdf ..."
"... The mortality rate for Greece is up approximately 50,000. All so Merkel in Germany, and Sarkozy and Hollande didn't have to go before their electorates and admit they were bailing out French and German banks through the backdoor. ..."
"... I guess all those little Balkan unpleasantnesses, the former Czechoslovakia and Bosnia and such, are not wars -- but then those are layable at the feet of NATO (that collection, as I recall it, of what, now, 29 member countries including all the Great Powers of the West) and the US imperium. ..."
"... The NATO establishment is about "making war," ..."
"... All of which is linked in significant ways to the economic "health" of the EU, from which lots of weapons flow in exchange for favors and money from the Destabilizers. ..."
"... In the meantime, the various stages are set, the players in the game of statism and nationalism and authoritarianism and neoliberalism are on their marks, the house lights are going out, and the long slow rise of the curtain is under way ..."
"... The period from the end of WWII to the Balkan Wars is still the longest period of peace since the Romans. I doubt you have ever lived through a war so I can't expect you to appreciate the difference between the Horrors of the Brussels Bureaucracy and the Horrors of Shelling and Bombing. ..."
"... I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending the EU. But it is facile and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter fantasies about how wonderful life would be without it. ..."
"... in the real world ..."
"... in the real world ..."
"... Ultimately, it's that simple. Merkel, Sarkozy, Hollande, and whoever else among the EU elites who chose to be complicit in killing substantial numbers of people so they could maintain themselves in power are scum. They are scum. They are scum. ..."
"... Fine, our elected leaders are all scum, but why does this mean that the EU is evil specifically. Why single it out? Why not advocate the overthrow of all centralized or unifying government? Move out to Montana to a cult and buy lots of guns or something. ..."
"... Ons should be very aware that EU directives comes mainly from the member states and that especially bad things that would never fly past an election could – and often is – spun by local government as "Big Bad Bruxelles is forcing poor little us to do this terrible thing to you poor people". Ala the British on trade deal with India and immigration of east-european workers. ..."
"... The EU does not have that much in the way of enforcement powers, that part is down-sourced to the individual member states. When a member state doesn't give a toss, it takes forever for some measure of sanctioning to spin up and usually it daily fines unto a misbehaving government, at the taxpayers expense (which of course those politicians who don't give a toss, are fine with since most of their cronies are not great taxpayers anyway). ..."
"... The solution is, patently, Tories out of power. Which I think will happen, certainly between now and 31 March 2019. Now would be better. Anyone thinking strategically in other parties in the UK (an oxymoron of a formulation, to be sure) would call for a no confidence vote the instant May's feet are on British soil. ..."
"... I doubt that this is personal, but what do I know. May is a nincompoop. The other heads of state patently, and quite rightly, don't respect her. Her presence has been useful to them only insofar as she could deliver a deal. ..."
"... I'd agree with your analysis of what happened – just glancing through the news today it seems that Macron in particular just lost patience, and the other leaders were happy to help him put the boot in. The EU has been trying to shore May up for a long time – the December agreement was little more than an attempt to protect her from an internal heave. This is a common dynamic in the EU – however much the leaders may dislike each other, they will usually prefer the person at the seat than the potential newcomer. ..."
"... But I think the EU has collectively decided that May is simply incapable of delivering any type of agreement, so there is no point in mincing words. They simply don't care any more if the Tory government collapses, or if they put Rees Mogg or Johnson in power. It makes absolutely zero difference to them. In fact, it might make it easier for the EU if the UK goes politically insane as they can then wash their hands of the problem. ..."
"... A colleague told me today he knows of several Northern Irish Republicans who voted leave, precisely because they thought this would create constitutional havoc and lead to a united Ireland. It seems at least some people were thinking strategically . ..."
"... British politicians apparently were supposed to negotiate Brexit among themselves. And once they had reached a (tentative) consensus the foreigners (the EU) were apparently supposed to bow down and accept the British proposal. ..."
"... Which means I never understood why the British media was treating the Chequers proposal as a serious proposal? And spending lots of time and articles discussing on how to convince the EU / the member states. ..."
"... As a Scot can I point out that it is English politicians who are responsible for this mess? ..."
Posted on
September 20, 2018 by Yves Smith Yves here. While the
specific observations in this post will be very familiar to readers (you've said the same
things in comments!), I beg to differ with calling the Government's Brexit negotiating stance a
strategy. It's bad habit plus lack of preparation and analysis.
And the UK's lack of calculation and self-awareness about how it is operating means it will
be unable to change course.
By Benjamin Martill, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Dahrendorf Forum where he focuses on
Europe after Brexit. He is based at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics's foreign policy
think tank. The Dahrendorf Forum is a joint research venture between LSE and the Hertie School
of Governance in Berlin. Originally published at
openDemocracy
But is this the best strategy for advancing British interests? Here is the argument based on
the findings of a recent Dahrendorf
Forum working paper .
All eyes in British politics are on the negotiations between the UK and the EU over the
terms of the forthcoming British withdrawal from the Union, or Brexit. Surprisingly, questions
of bargaining strategy – once the preserve of diplomats and niche academic journals
– have become some of the most defining issues in contemporary British politics.
The New Politics of Bargaining
Cabinet disagreements over the conduct of the negotiations led to the resignation of David
Davis and Boris Johnson in early July 2018 and the issue continues to divide the ruling
Conservative party. Theresa May's most recent statements have all addressed the question of how
hard she has pushed Brussels in the talks.
But is the hard bargaining strategy appropriate, or will it ultimately harm the UK? The
salience of this question should occasion deeper analysis of the fundamentals of international
bargaining, given the extent to which the course of British politics will be determined by the
government's performance (or perceived performance) in the Brexit talks.
Driving a Hard Bargain
A hard-bargaining strategy isn't necessarily a poor one. To the extent it is workable, it
may even represent the sensible option for the UK.
Hard bargaining is characterised by negative representations of negotiating partners,
unwillingness to make concessions, issuance of unrealistic demands, threats to damage the
partner or exit the negotiations, representations of the talks in zero-sum terms, failure to
provide argumentation and evidence, and withholding of information. From diplomats' portrayal
of the EU as an uncooperative and bullying negotiating partner to a set of demands recognised
as unrealistic in Brussels and Britain alike, the UK's approach to the Brexit negotiations
scores highly on each of these measures.
The consensus in the academic literature is generally that hard bargaining works only
where a given party has a relative advantage . Powerful states have an incentive to engage
in hard bargaining, since by doing so they will be able to extract greater concessions from
weaker partners and maximise the chance of achieving an agreement on beneficial terms.
But weaker actors have less incentive to engage in hard bargaining, since they stand to lose
more materially if talks break down and reputationally if they're seen as not being backed by
sufficient power,
So which is Britain?
Power Distribution
The success of hard bargaining depends on the balance of power. But even a cursory
examination would seem to confirm that the UK does not hold the upper hand in the negotiations.
Consider three standard measures of
bargaining power: a country's economic and military capabilities, the available alternatives to
making a deal, and the degree of constraint emanating from the public.
When it comes to capabilities, the UK is a powerful state with considerable economic clout
and greater military resources than its size would typically warrant. It is the second-largest
economy in the EU (behind Germany) and its GDP is equal to that of the smallest 19 member
states. And yet in relative terms, the combined economic and military power of the EU27 dwarves
that of the UK: the EU economy is five times the size of the UK's.
Next, consider the alternatives. A 'no deal' scenario would be damaging for both the UK and
the EU, but the impact would be more diffuse for the EU member states. They would each lose one
trading partner, whereas the UK would lose all of its regional trading partners. Moreover, the
other powers and regional blocs often cited as alternative trading partners (the US, China, the
Commonwealth, ASEAN) are not as open as the EU economy to participation by external parties,
nor are they geographically proximate (the greatest determinant of trade flows), nor will any
deal be able to replicate the common regulatory structure in place in the EU. This asymmetric
interdependence strongly suggests that the UK is in greater need of a deal than the EU.
Finally, consider the extent of domestic constraints. Constraint enhances power by
credibly preventing a leader from offering too generous a deal to the other side. On the EU
side the constraints are clear: Barnier receives his mandate from the European Council (i.e.
the member states) to whom he reports frequently. When asked to go off-piste in the
negotiations, he has replied that he does not have the mandate to do so. On the UK side, by
contrast, there is no such mandate. British negotiators continually cite Eurosceptic opposition
to the EU's proposals in the cabinet, the Conservative party, and the public, but they are
unable to guarantee any agreement will receive legislative assent, and cannot cite any unified
position.
Perceptions of Power
But the real power distribution is not the only thing that matters. While the EU is the more
powerful actor on objective criteria, a number of key assumptions and claims made by the
Brexiteers have served to reinforce the perception that Britain has the upper hand.
First, on the question of capabilities, the discourse of British greatness (often based on
past notions of power and prestige) belies the UK's status as a middle power (at best) and
raises unrealistic expectations of what Britain's economic and military resources amount to.
Second, on the question of alternatives, the oft-repeated emphasis on 'global Britain' and the
UK's stated aim to build bridges with its friends and allies around the globe understates the
UK's reliance on Europe, the (low) demand for relations with an independent Britain abroad, and
the value of free trade agreements or other such arrangements with third countries for the UK.
Third, on the question of domestic constraint, the post-referendum discourse of an indivisible
people whose wishes will be fulfilled only through the implementation of the Brexit mandate
belies the lack of consensus in British politics and the absence of a stable majority for
either of the potential Brexit options, including the 'no deal', 'hard', or 'soft' variants of
Brexit. Invoking 'the people' as a constraint on international action, in such circumstances,
is simply not credible.
Conclusion
Assumptions about Britain's status as a global power, the myriad alternatives in the wider
world, and the unity of the public mandate for Brexit, have contributed to the overstatement of
the UK's bargaining power and the (false) belief that hard bargaining will prove a winning
strategy.
Britain desperately needs to have an honest conversation about the limits of the UK's
bargaining power. This is not 'treasonous', as ardent Brexiteers have labelled similar nods to
reality, but is rather the only way to ensure that strategies designed to protect the national
interest actually serve this purpose. Power is a finite resource that cannot be talked into
existence. Like a deflating puffer fish, the UK's weakness will eventually become plain to see.
The risk is that before this occurs, all bridges will be burned, all avenues exhausted, and all
feathers ruffled.
The opinions expressed in this blog contribution are entirely those of the author and do
not represent the positions of the Dahrendorf Forum or its hosts Hertie School of Governance
and London School of Economics and Political Science or its funder Stiftung Mercator.
I tend to agree that there is no real strategy on the UK's part. May resembles a broken
record, where she says much the same thing over and over again, seemingly expecting a
different response each time. Although Einstein said that he probably never made the claim
about what insanity consists of, it is often attributed to him -- doing the same thing over
and over expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. How the government
expects that this sort of behavior will bring desirable results is beyond me.
Both UK and EU politicians are talking past each other. Neither side understands there are
two key issues. Firstly, not understanding the economic effects stemming from the failure to
understand how money is created and how it can be manipulated for global trading advantage.
Secondly, that the UK is high up the list for "cultural tightness" and the reasons for
this.
The other element of course of a negotiation is getting potential allies to roll up behind
you. At the start of this the UK had a series of potential 'friends' it could call on –
eurosceptics governments in Eastern Europe, close historic friends and political like minded
governments in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland. And of course non-EU countries
like India or the US with historic links.
They somehow managed to anger or frustrate nearly all of those though its heavy handed
negotiations or laughable lack of political empathy.
It must be emphasised that the current Irish government is ideologically and instinctively
very pro-London. And yet, today RTE is
reporting about the latest meeting between May and Varadkar:
The source said there was "an open exchange of views" between both sides, with the Irish
delegation emphasising that the time was short and "we need to get to the stage where we
can consider a legal text" on the backstop.
The source described British proposals so far as "only an outline, and we haven't seen
specific proposals from the British side."
This can only be translated as 'what the hell are they playing at?'
The Indians of course were amusedly baffled by the British assumption that they would
welcome open trade (without lots of new visas for Indian immigrants). Trump just smelt the
blood of a wounded animal. The Russians are well
The British cited the EU's inability to conclude a free-trade agreement with India as one
example of the EU's failings a revitalized Global Britain would no longer be shackled by.
That's quite rich considering the FTA was torpedoed when the British Home Secretary vetoed
increased visas for the Indians. Her name was Theresa May.
They somehow managed to anger or frustrate nearly all of those
Somehow?
The brits basically said: We are special people, much, much better, richer and stronger
than you sorry lot of Peons to Brussels(tm), so now you shall see sense and give us what we
want this week; you can call it your tribute if you like (because we don't care what you like
:)
Half the Danes are fed up with the whole thing and the other half would be egging on a
hard Brexit if only they could – knowing it will likely take out at least some of the
worst and most overleveraged (and gorged with tax-paid subsidies) Anti-Environmentalist
Danish industrial farmers, their bankers too. And diminish the power of their lobbyists:
"Landbrug & Fødevarer"!
The good part is that: the British and the Danish governments have managed to make "being
ruled by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels" look like a pretty much OK & decent deal,
considering the alternative options: Being ruled by our local crazies, straight-up nutters
and odious nincompoops (a word i like), half of whom, to top it up, are probably mere
soulless proxies for those ghouls that are running Washington DC.
It seems more and more to me, that never ending class warfare, and its current emphasis on
austerity, leaves us unable to envision alternate routes to economic health.
The neo-liberal consensus mandates that our ruling class never questions its own tactics,
ie dog-whistle racism to distract and divide the lower classes to enable all the looting.
So on both sides of the Atlantic, the rulers of English speakers stir up resentment
amongst those at the bottom in order to secure votes, and maintain power, while never
intending to follow through on promises to provide tangible material benefits to their
constituents.
The looting goes on, the trail of broken promises grows longer, and the misery
deepens.
The issue being ignored is that the folks at the bottom have reached the limit of their
ability to maintain life and limb in the face of downward economic pressure.
We've finally reached the end game, we in America have been driven to Trumpism, and in
Britain they've been driven to Brexit by the clueless efforts of pols to maintain power in
the face of electorates who have decided they have had enough, and will absolutely not take
the SOS anymore.
So we have the nonsensical situation of pols on both sides of the Atlantic flirting with
economic collapse, and even civil war rather than moderate their irrational fixation on
making the insanely rich even richer.
In both cases we have a cast of alternating villains robbing and beating us while waving
flags and loudly complaining that we aren't showing the proper level of enthusiasm.
Which leaves me with one question for those villains;
Why no one, especially the punditocracy seems to realize this, is astonishing.
I also cannot believe the Old Gray Lady killing millions of trees in its shrill efforts to
prove the Russians cost Hilary the election and nary a word about how totally fed up and
voiceless (with the exception of a single presidential vote) are those in the Great
Flyover.
Also find it amazing that the Beeb with rudimentary linguistic forensic analysis
identified Mike Pence as almost certainly the author of the scathing anti-Trump memo the NYT
published anonymously, without a single mention of this now widely-known fact.
On a related note, while this was about the tactics of leaving, there has been some
movement on the end state front, though not by the UK. Rather it seems that the EU has made
up it's mind, and in my mind definitively scrapped the EEA option.
Several EU leaders (Pms of Malta and the Czech republic) have clearly stated that they wish
to see a new referendum, and Macron said the following:
"Brexit is the choice of the British people pushed by those who predicted easy solutions.
Those people are liars. They left the next day so they didn't have to manage it," Macron said
on Thursday, vowing to "never" accept any Brexit deal, which would put the EU's integrity at
risk.
I think the bridges have been burned, now it's surrender or revocation that's left to the
UK, or stepping off the cliff edge.
It is astonishing to see that the UK still does not accept that the EU doesn't want it to
go on principle more than for practical reasons. May and the others cling to the notion that
without Great Britain, the EU will collapse or something. This is the same nation that has
been foot-dragging on everything about Europe and slagging off the continent at every turn
while pretending they are a Great Power and the BFF of the US. Trump does not care about
Great Britain unless he needs some sort of zoning permission for his gold course, in which
case he will cut a deal on trade or arms with May.
The Irish Border, assuming it remains open, is a massive concession and likely to lead to
future problems as other EU nations try to have open borders or trade with their pet
countries.
Brits on the Continent are worried about many things ranging from driver's licenses to
residency visas! Not every Brit wants to live on that damp little island! Some like the sun
and Continental cuisine.
Is the EU a Great Idea to be Protected and Advanced, one that will inexorably result in
ever greater benefits for the common people of the fainting nations that have been cat-herded
into submitting to the "political union" that many very personally interested parties are
always working toward? Like NATO is a Great Idea, not just a mechanism for global mischief
and chaos? NATO gives "warfighters" a place to sit and play their games. Brussels gives
"rules," at least some of which are sort of for public benefit, until the regulatory
capturers work their magic. Profit and impunity, always for the few.
What is the organizing principle in all this? Likely can't be stated. Just a lot of
interested parties squabbling over gobbets from the carcass torn from the planet
Maybe the 14th Century was not so very horrible after all? If one looks in "A Distant
Mirror" at it, given where humanity seems to be, on the increasingly fleshed-out timeline of
collapse?
OF course, one can always summon up the demoness TINA, to trump any efforts to take
different paths
NATO was created to make war. The EU was created to make peace and prosperity. Comparing
one to the other is unjust.
The EU is not some sacrosanct construct that must be worshiped, but it has brought peace
to Europe for the longest period since Pax Romana (and that was not entirely peaceful). It
has also promoted trade and prosperity. Europe has been even farther ahead of economic and
regulatory integration than the US (phones and credit cards come to mind). Free movement of
labor and travel have dropped costs for businesses and individuals immensely.
Now, whether or not human foibles enter into it is really another discussion. Is Brussels
at times a giant Interest Machine and Bureaucratic Nightmare? Yes, but that is the negative
face we see portrayed by anti-Europeans like the Brexiteers. The EU does a terrible job of
self-promotion; citizens rarely know just how much the EU contributes to their lives. Perhaps
the EU is afraid of drawing attention to itself. But the people making up the EU are not
extraterrestrials; they are Europeans who make the same mistakes and commit the same fraud on
a national level.
Many Americans criticize Europe while vaunting their own Federation. Why should California
and Alabama share a currency, a passport and a Congress? There are more differences between
those states than between France and Belgium or Italy and Spain.
The EU is not perfect and has costs, but measured against what it has achieved, it is a
great success.
The mortality rate for Greece is up approximately 50,000. All so Merkel in Germany, and
Sarkozy and Hollande didn't have to go before their electorates and admit they were bailing
out French and German banks through the backdoor.
If you want to start accounting for economic death by economic war, we can look at the US
as recently as the financial crisis, though I doubt there are studies on the Homeland of this
sort. Or US embargoes of vital medication and food in Iraq which led to hundreds of thousands
of deaths. And so on.
My point is not that the EU is perfect, but there has not been a war in Western Europe since
1945. You are welcome to spin and fiddle and search for anything you like (Gosh, all that
free travel led to increases in traffic deaths! Ban the EU!). Of course, we would also need
to examine what the EU has done for Europe and how many lives have been saved by improved
infrastructure and exchange of information.
I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending the EU. But it is facile
and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter fantasies about how
wonderful life would be without it. Let's see how Great Britain does and then we can discuss
this in a few years.
I guess all those little Balkan unpleasantnesses, the former Czechoslovakia and Bosnia and
such, are not wars -- but then those are layable at the feet of NATO (that collection, as I
recall it, of what, now, 29 member countries including all the Great Powers of the West) and
the US imperium.
The NATO establishment is about "making war," largely now displaced to other Woggish and Hajji places where the huge number of refugees that are moving into Eurospace are
coming from (as a result of the largely economically driven (oil and other extraction
interests) and Israeli and Saudi-enhanced large scale destabilizing war prosecution.
All of
which is linked in significant ways to the economic "health" of the EU, from which lots of
weapons flow in exchange for favors and money from the Destabilizers.
Yes, the EU notion of reducing the conflict generators of the past seems to be a good one.
But surprise! In practice, you got your German hegemon and your French strutters and now of
course the British bomb throwers pointing out, along with the renascent nationalism triggered
in part by the hegemon's bleeding of other nations via Brussels and EU institutions, like
Greece and Spain and Italy and so forth.
And of course the warring that the seamless
economies of the EU (that includes their particpation in NATO) foster and participate in that
drives the exodus of mopes from the Mideast and Africa. And how about the fun and games, with
possible nuclear war consequences, that are playing out with EU and NATO and of course US
Imperial Interests activity in Ukraine? And I see that the Krupp Werks has delivered a bunch
of warships to various places (hasn't that happened a couple of times in the past? Thinking
how particularly of Dolphin-class submarines paid for by Uncle Sucker, as in the US, and
delivered to the Israel -ites who have equipped them with many nuclear-warhead cruise
missiles? And thanks to the French, of course, and other Great Nations, the Israelis have
nuclear weapons in the first place.
It's nice that the science parts of the EU structure are sort of working to keep US-made
toxins and genetically modified crap and other bad stuff out of the Holy EU Empire. But hey,
how many VW diesel vehicles on the road (thanks to some combination of corruption and
incompetence on the part of the EU?) equals how much glyphosate and stacked-GM organisms
barred by EU regulations? Lots of argument possible around the margins and into the core of
the political economy/ies that make up the EU/NATO, and the Dead Empire across the Channel,
and of course the wonderful inputs from the empire I was born into.
I guess the best bet
would be to program some AI device to create a value structure (to be democratically studied
and voted on, somehow?) and measure all the goods and bads of the EU, according to some kind
of standard of Goodness to Mope-kind? Naw, power trumps all that of course, and "interests"
now very largely denominated and dominated by supranational corporations that piss on the EU
when not using its institutions as a means to legitimize their looting behaviors that sure
look to me like an expression of a death wish from the human species.
There are always winners and losers in any human game, because at anything larger than the
smallest scale, we do not appear wired to work from comity and commensalism. You sound from
the little one can see of you from your comment as a person among the winners. Which is fine,
all well and good, because of that "winners and losers" thing. Until either the mass vectors
of human behavior strip the livability out of the biosphere, or some provocation or mischance
leads to a more compendious and quicker, maybe nuclear, endpoint. Or maybe, despite the
activities of the Panopticon and the various powers with forces in the polity to tamp it
down, maybe there will be a Versailles moment, and "Aux Armes, Citoyens" will eventuate.
In the meantime, the various stages are set, the players in the game of statism and
nationalism and authoritarianism and neoliberalism are on their marks, the house lights are
going out, and the long slow rise of the curtain is under way
I suggest you read up on your recent European history. Czechoslovakia split entirely
peacefully and it had exactly zero to do with either NATO or USA.
Yugoslavia had its problems ever since it was Yugoslavia in early 20th century – all
Tito managed was to postpone it, and once he was gone, it was just a question of when, and
how violent it would be. Serbian apologistas like to blame NATO, conveniently ignoring any
pre-existing tensions between Croats and Serbs (not to mention ex-Yugoslavian muslims). Did
NATO help? No. But saying it was the cause of the Serbo-Croat war and all the Yugoslavian
fallout is ignorance.
What gets my goat is when someone blames everything on CIA, USA, NATO (or Russia and China
for the matter), denying the small peoples any agency. Especially when that someone tends to
have about zilch understanding of the regions in question, except from a selective
reading.
Yep, CIA and NATO and the Illuminati (and Putin, to put it on both sides) are the
all-powerful, all seeing, all-capable forces. Everyone else is a puppet. Right.
The period from the end of WWII to the Balkan Wars is still the longest period of peace
since the Romans. I doubt you have ever lived through a war so I can't expect you to
appreciate the difference between the Horrors of the Brussels Bureaucracy and the Horrors of
Shelling and Bombing. From your lofty armchair, they might be the same but then again,
perhaps you blame the socialists when your caramel latte is cold.
Lofty armchair? I actually volunteered and got the opportunity to go be a soldier in an
actual war, the Vietnam one. So I have a darn good idea what War is in actuality and from
unpleasant personal experience. And I don't have either the taste or the wealth for lattes.
And forgive my aging failure of typing Czech instead of Yugo -- my point, too, is that the
nations and sets of "peoples" living and involved in United Europe do in fact have "agency,"
and that is part of the fractiousness that the proponents of a federated Europe (seemingly
under mostly German lead) are working steadily at suppressing. Not as effectively as a
Federalist might want, of course.
TheScream wrote: I am not defending poor governance per se for the sake of defending
the EU. But it is facile and fun to criticize it because one can make up all kinds of counter
fantasies about how wonderful life would be without it.
Wake up. I'm talking about what the European elite in the real world deliberately
chose to do.
They chose to do a backdoor bailout of German and French banks specifically so
Merkel, Sarkozy and Hollande and the governments they led didn't have to go to their
electorates and tell them the truth. Thereby, they maintained themselves in power, and German
and French wealth structures -- the frickin', frackin banks -- as they were. And they did
this in the real world knowing that innocent people in Greece would die in
substantial numbers consequently.
This is not a counterfactual. This happened.
There's a technical term for people who plan and execute policies where many thousands of
people die so they themselves can benefit. That term is 'scum.'
Ultimately, it's that simple. Merkel, Sarkozy, Hollande, and whoever else among the EU
elites who chose to be complicit in killing substantial numbers of people so they could
maintain themselves in power are scum. They are scum. They are scum.
Don't get me started on people who defend such scum with threadbare waffle about 'I am not
defending poor governance per blah blah it is facile and fun to criticize blah blah.' Nor
interested in whataboutery about US elites, who as the main instigators of this 21st century
model of finance as warfare are also scum.
Fine, our elected leaders are all scum, but why does this mean that the EU is evil
specifically. Why single it out? Why not advocate the overthrow of all centralized or
unifying government? Move out to Montana to a cult and buy lots of guns or something.
My point is not that EU leaders are charming people working exclusively for the good of the
people. My point is that the EU is not as bad as most of you believe and no worse than most
other governments. It is simply an easy target because it is extra or supra-national. We can
get all frothy at the mouth blaming Nazis and Frogs for our woes and ignore our personal
failures.
I would love to insult you personally as you have insulted me, but I sense you are just
ranting out of frustration. You hate the EU (are you even European or just some right-wing
nutcase from America involving yourself in other's business?) and take it out on me. Go for
it. Your arguments are irrelevant and completely miss the point of my comments.
The EU does a terrible job of self-promotion; citizens rarely know just how much the EU
contributes to their live
The EU is, very simplistically, set up like a shared Civil Service. Civil Services are to
be seen rarely and never heard, less they take shine and glamour from the Government they
serve.
What "Bruxelles" can do is to advise and create Directives, which are instructions to
local government to create and enforce local legislation. The idea is that the legislation
and enforcement will be similar in all EU member states.
Ons should be very aware that EU directives comes mainly from the member states and that
especially bad things that would never fly past an election could – and often is
– spun by local government as "Big Bad Bruxelles is forcing poor little us to do this
terrible thing to you poor people". Ala the British on trade deal with India and immigration
of east-european workers.
The EU does not have that much in the way of enforcement powers, that part is down-sourced
to the individual member states. When a member state doesn't give a toss, it takes forever
for some measure of sanctioning to spin up and usually it daily fines unto a misbehaving
government, at the taxpayers expense (which of course those politicians who don't give a
toss, are fine with since most of their cronies are not great taxpayers anyway).
"Maybe the 14th Century was not so very horrible after all?"
Hopefully sarcastic?
Dude -- black plague! 75 to 200 million dead! At a tie with a world population of 400
million, and 40 million of those may as well have been on Mars! China, ME, North Africa and
Europe depopulated!
Time to really reconsider one's assumptions when one wonders whether the 14th century was
"that bad".
Dude, yes, sarcastic. And ironic. Doesn't change the horribleness of the present, does it
now? Or the coming horrors (say some of us) that may have been inevitably priced in to the
Great Global Market, does it
Donald Tusk, the European council president, has ratcheted up the pressure on Theresa
May by rejecting the Chequers plan and warning of a breakdown in the Brexit talks unless
she delivers a solution for the Irish border by October – a deadline the British
prime minister had already said she will not be able to meet.
The stark threat to unravel the talks came as the French president, Emmanuel Macron,
broke with diplomatic niceties and accused those of backing Brexit of being liars. "Those
who explain that we can easily live without Europe, that everything is going to be all
right, and that it's going to bring a lot of money home are liars," he said.
"It's even more true since they left the day after so as not to have to deal with it."
The comments came at the end of a leaders' summit in Salzburg, where May had appealed
for the EU to compromise to avoid a no-deal scenario. She had been hoping to take warm
words over Chequers into Conservative party conference.
Tusk, who moments before his comments had a short meeting with the prime minister, told
reporters that he also wanted to wrap up successful talks in a special summit in
mid-November.
But, in a step designed to pile pressure on the prime minister, he said this would not
happen unless the British government came through on its commitment to finding a "precise
and clear" so-called backstop solution that would under any future circumstances avoid a
hard border on the island of Ireland.
"Without an October grand finale, in a positive sense of this word, there is no reason
to organise a special meeting in November," Tusk said. "This is the only condition when it
comes to this possible November summit."
It seems the EU leaders aren't even pretending anymore. Its pretty clear they have run out
of patience, and May has run out of options. I wonder if they'll even bother with having the
November summit.
If there's no November summit (which would make no-deal Brexit almost certainty), then the
game becomes fast a and furious, as sterling will drop like a stone – with all sorts of
repercussions. TBH, that can already be clear after the Tory party conference, it's entirely
possible that that one will make any October Brexit discussions entirely irrelevant.
I think that EU overestimated May in terms of sensibility, and now accept that there's no
difference between May and Johnson (in fact, with Johnson or someone like that, they will get
certainy, so more time to get all ducks in row. Entirely cynically, clear no-deal Brexit
Johnson would be better for EU than May where one has no idea what's going to happen).
Either way, this crop of politicians will make history books. Not sure in the way they
would like to though.
Announced post-summit in Salzburg: no November summit absent a binding exit deal on the
table by the end of October. So no: no November dealing.
I don't know that EU politicos overestimated May. She is what they had, and all they had,
so they did their absolute best to prop up Rag Sack Terry as a negotiating partner, hoping
that they could coax her to toddle over their red lines with enough willingness to listen to
her hopeless twaddle first. She just shuffled and circled in place. So they've given up on
her ability to deliver anything of value to them. One could see this coming in June, when she
couldn't even get the sound of one hand clapping to her chipper nonsense over dinner.
I think that deciding heads in Europe have accepted the probability that crashout is
coming. That was clear also in June. If something better happens, I suppose that they would
leap at it. Nothing in the last two years engenders any hope in that regard, so hard heads
are readying the winches to hoist the drawbridge on We're Dead to You Day.
If the Tories fall, which I think and have long thought is probable, it would be up to a
'unity government' to either initial a settlement surrender and keep the sham going, or
flinch. My bet has been on pulling together some kind of flinch mechanism on aborting exit.
It's the kind of year, as I model these, where wild swings of such kind are possible, but I
couldn't predict the outcome anymore than anyone else.
My feeling for a while is that the government would never fall, whatever happened, simply
because the Tories (and DUP) fear a Corbyn government too much, so would never, ever pull the
trigger, no matter how bad things got. But if May falls at the Party Conference and is
replaced with a hard Brexiter, I don't think its impossible that there may be a temptation
that to see if they could whip up a nationalistic mood for a snap election. Some of them are
gamblers by instinct. Anything could happen then.
I think Tory Remainers bolt, choosing keeping their own wallets rather than handing those
over to the worst of their lot with everything else. But they would find a unity coalition
more palatable than passing the microphone to Jerry the Red, yeah, so that's a bit sticky. A
snap election is the worst kind of crazy town, and wolldn't improve negotiating or decision
outcomes in the slightest -- so of course that may be the likeliest near term course! Won't
get settled in a few weeks. Probably not until 20 March 2019.
This is just wowsers. Tusk, Macron, and Merkel baldly state that Chequers is mated --
"unacceptable" -- and furthermore gave the Tories a drop-dead date of 31 October to initial
the divorce settlement. The process is a flat abandonment of Theresa May, concluding the
obvious, that she and her government are incapable of negotiating exit. Going over her head
to Parliament and public, in fact if not in pre-consisdered intent. -- And about time. I was
worried that the EU would eat fudge in November with the Brits again on another
pretend-to-agree accord like that of December 2017, which, as we have seen did nothing to
induce the Tories to negotiate a viable outcome.
What was May's reaction? That she's perfectly prepared to lead Britain over the crashout
cliff if the EU doesn't see fit to capitulate. I'd roll on the floor laughing but I can't
catch my breath.
The next two weeks are going to be lively times in Britain indeed. I can't see how
'Suicide Terry's' government can survive this situation. -- And about high time. Put the poor
brute out of her misery; she's delusional, can't they see how she's suffering? Push has come,
so it's time to shove. Crashout or Flinch, those are the outcomes, now plainer than ever. All
May can do is thrash and fabulate, so time to bag the body and swear in another fool; lesser
or greater, we shall see.
Yes, I wonder was that planned, or (as is suggested in the
latest Guardian articl e), motivated by anger at Mays criticism of Barnier?
EU sources said the move had been made on the bidding of Macron, who urged taking a hard
line over lunch. The French president had been infuriated by May's warning earlier in the
day to Varadkar that she believed a solution on the issue could not be found by October,
despite previous promises to the contrary.
The tone of the prime minister's address to the EU leaders on Wednesday night, during
which she attacked Michel Barnier, is also said by sources to have been the cause of
irritation.
This obviously makes her very vulnerable at the party conference. Its hard to see what she
can do now. She is toast I think.
I can only think of two reasons that they've closed the door firmly in her face. Either
they have simply lost patience and now accept there is nothing can be salvaged, or they have
lost patience with May personally, and hope that a new leader might do a deal out of
desperation. The latter seems highly unlikely – a sudden Tory challenge is more likely
to bring a hardliner into power.
Whichever way you look at it, things look certain to come to a head very soon now. The EU
may have a hope that the UK will blink when staring into the abyss and agree to the backstop,
but I don't see how politically this a capitulation is possible, at least with the Tories in
power.
The solution is, patently, Tories out of power. Which I think will happen, certainly
between now and 31 March 2019. Now would be better. Anyone thinking strategically in other
parties in the UK (an oxymoron of a formulation, to be sure) would call for a no confidence
vote the instant May's feet are on British soil.
I doubt that this is personal, but what do I know. May is a nincompoop. The other heads of
state patently, and quite rightly, don't respect her. Her presence has been useful to them
only insofar as she could deliver a deal. Macron looked at his watch and the date said, non on that. Just looking at his ambitions and how he operates, I would think he
wanted to go this route quite some time ago, but the 'softly, softly' set such as the Dutch
and Merkel wouldn't back that, and he was too smart to break ranks alone. That the Germans
have given up on May is all one really needs to know. This was May's no confidence vote by
the European Council, and she lost it over lunch.
I'd agree with your analysis of what happened – just glancing through the news today
it seems that Macron in particular just lost patience, and the other leaders were happy to
help him put the boot in. The EU has been trying to shore May up for a long time – the
December agreement was little more than an attempt to protect her from an internal heave.
This is a common dynamic in the EU – however much the leaders may dislike each other,
they will usually prefer the person at the seat than the potential newcomer.
But I think the EU has collectively decided that May is simply incapable of delivering any
type of agreement, so there is no point in mincing words. They simply don't care any more if
the Tory government collapses, or if they put Rees Mogg or Johnson in power. It makes
absolutely zero difference to them. In fact, it might make it easier for the EU if the UK
goes politically insane as they can then wash their hands of the problem.
At this point it might actually be a blessing if that happened. There is likely to be a
great deal of practical difference between a no-deal Brexit with six months of planning and
preparation and a no-deal Brexit that takes everyone by surprise at the very last minute.
(Yes, they will both be a nightmare, but some nightmares are worse than others). All this
pretense that the other side is bluffing and will roll over at the 11th hour is starting to
look like a convenient excuse for not facing reality. I don't think either side is
bluffing.
Comments like "Britain desperately needs to have an honest conversation about the limits
of the UK's bargaining power" might very well be true, but they're also irrelevant at this
point. Certainly it would have been very useful if it had happened two years ago. Right now
it's time to break out the life jackets.
Most Brits don't seem capable of mentally accepting how irrelevant they actually are
internationally. They are NOT a 'power' in any other respect than that they have nuclear
weapons under their launch authority (which they are never going to use). They have no
weight. The City is, really other people's money that predominantly foreign nationals at
trading desks play with, loose, steal, hide, and occasionally pay out. The UK economy isn't
of any international consequence. Brits are embedded in the international diplomatic
process, in a dead language speakers kind of way, which makes them seem important. But they
are not.
So there was never going to be a reassessment of the weaknesses of Britain's negotiating
position, nor will there be now exactly, because most in Britain cannot get their heads
around the essential premise to such a discussion, the Britain is now essentially trivial on
the power scale rather than of any real consequence. The Kingdom of Saud has more real power.
Turkey is a more consequential actor. Mexico has more people. &etc.
If one is to accept the convictions of master bloviator Niall Ferguson and other
Brexiteers, the issue is issue. Brexit is about immigration, period. The EU claims it will
not bend on free movement of people, Brexiteers will not accept anything less. There was such
a huge outcry when May mentioned the possibility of 'preferential' treatment for EU citizens
back in July she threatened any further public dissent in the party would result in sackings.
The EU insists there can be no trade deals, no freed movement of goods without free movement
of people, for good reasons. Hard to imagine them climbing down.
There's about as many reasons why people voted Brexit as there's different Brexits they
wanted. Immigration is just one of the convenient scapegoats peddled by both sides, although
for different reasons.
If you want a better (but still not complete) reason, try decreasing real income.
I'd like to know what those "many different reasons" are. Sovereignty? Well, that rolls
off the tongue more easily than "immigration" which, leavers know, sounds a bit racist.
"Control of borders" works for leavers like Nigell, although he went on at great length about
how it's all about immigration, after talking to all the 'real' folks in the provinces.
My Irish/Brit family's Own Private Brexit: the grandparents are entitled to naturalisation
and voted Leave, the children are subjects/citizens and voted Remain (and almost all vote
Tory), the grandchildren are compromised subjects/citizens and didn't have a vote. Everyone's
happy to be entitled to an EU passport. The Pakistan offshoot has a less complex variation
(fewer rights), but I believe their family voted Leave on balance. Life.
A colleague told me today he knows of several Northern Irish Republicans who voted leave,
precisely because they thought this would create constitutional havoc and lead to a united
Ireland. It seems at least some people were thinking strategically .
Majority of the drop in real income is NOT driven by immigration. You may find it
surprising, but there were times with large (relatively speaking) immigration and the real
incomes going up.
I don't believe it is either, you seem to think these views are my own. I am speculating,
with some basis, that a majority of leavers think so. Anti-immigration attitudes are
entrenched and growing. Just the other day a teacher, no less, spouted off about how
immigrants were causing crime and stealing jobs. This is in a blue city in a blue state. I
was shocked.
People come up with fantasy explanations when they've been reduced from realistic
assessments to fantastic ideologies. If there's a clear answer but you are ideologically
constrained from considering it, you need to invent some answer, the nuttier the better.
I think a major part of the problem is that British politicians and media seem to believe
that Brexit is mainly (or exclusively) a British topic.
One British politician publishes one proposal, another British politician shoots it down.
With the British media reporting about it gleefully for days. Newspaper articles, opinion
pieces. Without even mentioning what the EU might think about it. The EU seems to not exist
in this bubble.
Just remember the more than 60 "notices to stakeholders" published by the EU months ago.
And freely available for reading on the Internet. I´ve read British media online for a
long time now but somehow these notices never made any impact. It was only when the first
British impact assessments were published (not that long ago) that British media started to
report about possible problems after a no-deal Brexit. Problems / consequences that were
mentioned in the EU notices months ago.
It´s almost unbelievable. It looks like if something isn´t coming from London (or
Westminster) then it doesn´t exist in the British media.
And it´s the same with British politicians.
David Davis and the back-stop deal in late 2017?. He agreed with it during the negotiations,
returned home and then said that it wasn´t binding, just a letter of intent. Or Michael
Gove a few days ago? Regardless of what agreement PM T. May negotiates now with the EU, a new
PM can simply scrap it and negotiate a new deal? Or send government members to the EU member
states to try and undermine Barnier as reported in British media? How exactly is that
building trust?
Have they never heard about the Internet? And that today even foreigners might read British
media?
Brexit supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg might be the MP for the 18th century but surely they know
that today there are faster methods for messages than using pigeons?
What about foreign investment in the UK? The gateway to the EU? Japanese car
companies?
The drop in foreign investment was reported, to be sure. But after a few days it was
immediately forgotten.
T. May according to British media articles apparently developed her Brexit strategy (and
her red lines) together with her two closest political advisers back in late 2016 / early
2017. No cabinet meeting to discuss the strategy, no ordering of impact assessments which
might have influenced the strategy (and the goals). And apparently – in my opinion
– no detailed briefing on how the EU actually works. What might be realistically
possible and what not.
The resignation of Ivan Rogers seems to support my speculations. Plus the newspaper
articles in early 2017 which mentioned that visitors to certain British government ministries
were warned not to criticize Brexit or warn about negative consequences. Such warnings would
result in no longer being invited to visit said ministry and minister.
If they actually went through with that policy they created an echo chamber with no
dissenting voices allowed.
Which might explain why they had no plan to deal with the EU.
British politicians apparently were supposed to negotiate Brexit among themselves. And once
they had reached a (tentative) consensus the foreigners (the EU) were apparently supposed to
bow down and accept the British proposal.
And now when the EU hasn´t followed the script they don´t know what to do?
I´m not an expert but it was pretty clear to me that the Chequers deal would never
work. It was pretty obvious even when EU politicians were somewhat polite about it when T.
May proposed it.
It might have been a good starting point for negotiations if she had introduced it in 2017.
But in July 2018? Just a few months before negotiations were supposed to be concluded? And
then claiming it´s the only realistic proposal? It´s my way or the highway?
It was obvious.
Which means I never understood why the British media was treating the Chequers proposal as a
serious proposal? And spending lots of time and articles discussing on how to convince the EU
/ the member states.
I really think the EU member states have finally concluded that T. May is incapable of
producing (and getting a majority in the House of Commons) for any realistic solution.
Therefore helping her with statements to keep her politically alive doesn´t make sense
any longer. The EU would probably really, really like a solution that gives them at least the
transition period. Another 21 months to prepare for Brexit. But fudging things only get you
that far .
The UK apparently never understood that it´s one thing to bend rules or fudge things to
get the agreement of a member state. It´s quite another thing with a soon -to-be
ex-member state.
I am a German citizen, living in Germany.
The (German weekly printed newspaper) Zeit Online website did have three articles about
Brexit in the last few days. Which is noteworthy since they normally have 1-2 articles per
month.
And the comments were noteworthy too.
Almost all of them now favor a hard-line approach by the EU.
The UK lost a lot of sympathy and support in the last two years. Not because of the
referendum result itself but because of the actions and speeches of British politicians
afterwards.
The UK had a rebate, opt-outs and excemptions. All because successive British governments
pointed to their EU-sceptic opposition. Now the population voted for Brexit the British want
a deal that gives them all (or most) of the advantages of EU membership without any of the
obligations. To reduce the economic consequences of their decision.
No longer.
Actions have consequences.
And if it means we´ll have to support Ireland, we´ll do it.
The German commentators quite obviously have lost their patience with the UK.
This is the first article that I have seen that talks about power. The ability to
influence or outright control the behavior of people. Money has power. It is needed to eat,
heal and shelter in the West. But, it is never talked about. This is because it would raise
inconvenient truths. The wealthy are accumulating it and everyone else in the West is losing
it. The neo-liberal/neo-conservative ideologies are the foundation of this exploitation. It
is the belief that markets balance and there is no society. "Greed is good. Might is right."
Plutocrats rule the west. Democracy died. There are two versions of similar corporate
political parties in the USA. The little people matter not. Politicians are servants of the
oligarchs. Global trade is intertwined and not redundant. What will happen will be to the
benefit of the very few in power. Donald Trump is raising the price of all Chinese goods
shipped into the USA and sold at Walmart and Amazon. A Brexit crash seems inevitable.
Amen! It is ALWAYS about power. And the only way to deal with the elites is "Lord of the
Rings" style:
their money must be cast into a financial version of Mount Doom, breaking their power once
and for all. You folks in the UK need to make douchebag Brexiteers like Nigel Farrage suffer
total loss of power for forcing this disaster on you.
There is a huge source of wealth that UK monopolises from Treasure Islands that operate
the City's tax havens. That money goes straight back to City banks and flows into the market
economy, independently of trade and commerce. It underwrites the derivatives biz that keeps
the market economy afloat, paying pensions and profits and Directors' options.
Leaving the EU might have an effect but not a big one. Is that why UK seems so blithely
unconcerned?
The offshore wealth is certainly why the core hard Brexiters are unconcerned, because
thats where they store their cash. They don't care if the UK goes down.
But in the longer term, they are under threat – within the EU the UK consistently
vetoed any attempts to crack down on internal tax havens. The internal political balance of
the EU is now much more firmly anti tax avoidance with the UK gone, so there would be little
to stop a series of Directives choking off the Channel Island/Isle of Man option for money
flows.
Split Brain Syndrome: They seem think that the EU is Lucifer's Army Incarnate and then
they apparently also think at the same time, that "The Army of Darkness" once unleashed from
the responsible British leadership into the hands of those per-definition also demonic French
and Germans will still "play cricket" and not come after their tax-havens ASAP, like in 2020
or so.
May now demanding that the EU respect Great Britain. We are back to the beginning again.
May has no leverage beyond the EU wanting Britain to stay in . But if Britain goes out, then
it's out. The only way for May to get any concessions would be to offer to stay in! And even
then I am not sure the EU would accept since it would simply open the way for any member to
have a tantrum and demand better terms.
GB should leave, wallow in their loneliness a while and then ask to come back. I suspect
that the EU would reinstate them fully without the usual processes. Check back here in 24-36
months.
This is a very weak article, but it raises several important questions such as the role or neoliberal MSM in color revolution
against Trump and which social group constituted the voting block that brought Trump to victory. The author answers incorrectly on
both those questions.
I think overall Tremblay analysis of Trump (and by extension of national neoliberalism he promotes) is incorrect. Probably the largest group
of voters which voted for Trump were voters who were against neoliberal globalization and who now feel real distrust and aversion to
the ruling neoliberal elite.
Trump is probably right to view neoliberal journalists as enemies: they are tools of intelligence agencies which as agents of
Wall Street promote globalization
At the same time Trump turned to be Obama II: he instantly betrayed his voters after the election. His
election slogan "make Ameraca great again" bacem that same joke as Obama "Change we can believe in". And he proved to be as
jingoistic as Obama (A Nobel Pease Price laureate who was militarists dream come true)
In discussion of groups who votes for Trump the author forgot to mention part of professional which skeptically view neoliberal
globalization and its destrction of jobs (for example programmer jobs in the USA) as well as blue color
workers decimated by offshoring of major industries.
Notable quotes:
"... "Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. " ..."
"... Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas City, July 24, 2018) ..."
"... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." ..."
"... This is a White House where everybody lies ..."
"... I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ..."
"... The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda. ..."
"... ad hominem' ..."
"... Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical showman diva , behaving in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians. ..."
"... He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication. ..."
"... checks and balance ..."
"... The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current administration and for future ones. ..."
"Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what
you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. "
Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas
City, July 24, 2018)
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903-1950), English novelist, essayist, and social critic, (in '1984', Ch. 7, 1949)
" This is a White House where everybody lies ." Omarosa Manigault Newman (1974- ), former White House aide to President
Donald Trump, (on Sunday August 12, 2018, while releasing tapes recording conversations with Donald Trump.)
" I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ." Benjamin Franklin (
1706 –
1790 ), American inventor and US Founding Father, (in 'Words of
the Founding Fathers', 2012).
***
In this day and age, with instant information, how does a politician succeed in double-talking, in bragging, in scapegoating and
in shamefully distorting the truth, most of the time, without being unmasked as a charlatan and discredited? Why? That is the mysterious
and enigmatic question that one may ask about U. S. President Donald Trump, as a politician.
The most obvious answer is the fact that Trump's one-issue and cult-like followers do not care what he does or says and whether
or not he has declared a
war on truth and reality , provided he delivers the political and financial benefits they demand of him, based on their ideological
or pecuniary interests. These groups of voters live in their own reality and only their personal interests count.
1- Four groups of one-issue voters behind Trump
There are four groups of one-issue voters to
whom President Donald Trump has delivered the goodies:
Christian religious right voters, whose main political issue is to fill the U. S. Supreme Court with ultra conservative
judges. On that score, Donald Trump has been true to them by naming one such judge and in nominating a second one.
Super rich Zionists and the Pro-Israel Lobby, whose obsession is the state of Israel. Again, on that score, President
Donald Trump has fulfilled his promise to them and he has unilaterally moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in addition
to attacking the Palestinians and tearing up the 'Iran Deal'.
The one-percent Income earners and some corporate owners, whose main demand to Trump was substantial tax cuts and
deregulation. Once again, President Trump has fulfilled this group's wishes with huge tax cuts, mainly financed with future public
debt increases, which are going to be paid for by all taxpayers.
The NRA and the Pro-Gun Lobby, whose main obsession is to have the right to arm themselves to the teeth, including
with military assault weapons, with as few strings attached as possible. Here again President Donald Trump has sided with them
and against students who are increasingly in the line of fire in American schools.
With the strong support of these four monolithic lobbies -- his electoral base -- politician Donald Trump can count on the indefectible
support of between 35 percent and 40 percent of the American electorate. It is ironic that some of Trump's other policies, like reducing
health care coverage and the raising of import taxes, will hurt the poor and the middle class, even though some of Trump's victims
can be considered members of the above lobbies.
Moreover, some of Trump's supporters regularly rely on
hypocrisy and on excuses to exonerate their favorite
but flawed politician of choice. If any other politician from a different party were to say and do half of what Donald Trump does
and says, they would be asking for his impeachment.
There are three other reasons why Trump's rants, his
record-breaking lies , his untruths, his deceptions and his dictatorial-style attempts to
control information , in the eyes of his fanatical supporters, at least, are like water on the back of a duck. ( -- For the record,
according to the
Washington Post , as of early August, President Trump has made some 4,229 false claims, which amount to 7.6 a day, since his
inauguration.)
The first reason can be found in Trump's view that politics and even government business are first and foremost another form
of
entertainment , i.e. a sort of TV reality show, which must be scripted and acted upon. Trump thinks that is
OK to lie
and to ask his assistants to
lie
. In this new immoral world, the Trump phenomenon could be seen a sign of
post-democracy .
The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and
manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda.
When Trump attacks the media, he is in fact coaxing them to give him free coverage to spread his
insults , his fake accusations, his provocations, his constant
threats , his denials or reversals, his convenient
changes of subject or his political spins. Indeed, with his outrageous statements, his gratuitous accusations and his attacks
' ad hominem' , and by constantly bullying and insulting adversaries at home and foreign heads of states abroad, and
by issuing threats in repetition, right and left, Trump has forced the media to talk and journalists to write about him constantly,
on a daily basis, 24/7.
That suits him perfectly well because he likes to be the center of attention. That is how he can change the political rhetoric
when any negative issue gets too close to him. In the coming weeks and months, as the Special prosecutor
Robert Mueller's report is likely to be released, Donald Trump is not above resorting to some sort of "
Wag the Dog " political trickery, to change the topic and to possibly push the damaging report off the headlines.
In such a circumstance, it is not impossible that launching an illegal war of choice, say against Iran (a
pet
project of Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton), could then look very convenient to a crafty politician like Donald
Trump and to his warmonger advisors. Therefore, observers should be on the lookout to spot any development of the sort in the
coming weeks.
That one man and his entourage could whimsically consider launching a
war of aggression is a throwback to ancient times
and is a sure indication of the level of depravity to which current politics has fallen. This should be a justified and clear
case for impeachment .
Finally, some far-right media outlets, such as
Fox News and
Sinclair Broadcasting , have taken it upon themselves to systematically present Trump's lies and misrepresentations as some
'alternative' truths and facts.
Indeed, ever since 1987, when the Reagan administration abolished the
Fairness Doctrine for licensing public radio
and TV waves, and since a Republican dominated Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for the
mass conglomeration of local broadcasting
in the United States, extreme conservative news outlets, such as the Fox and Sinclair networks, have sprung up. They are well
financed, and they have essentially become powerful
political propaganda machines , erasing the line between facts and fiction, and regularly presenting fictitious alternative
facts as the truth.
In so doing, they have pushed public debates in the United States away from facts, reason and logic, at least for those listeners
and viewers for whom such outlets are the only source of information. It is not surprising that such far-right media have also
made Donald Trump the champion of their cause, maliciously branding anything inconvenient as 'fake' news, as Trump has done in
his own anti-media campaign and his sustained assault on the free press.
2- Show Politics and public affairs as a form of entertainment
Donald Trump does not seem to take politics and public affairs very seriously, at least when his own personal interests are involved.
Therefore, when things go bad, he never volunteers to take personal responsibility, contrary to what a true leader would do, and
he conveniently
shifts the blame on somebody else. This is a sign of immaturity or cowardice. Paraphrasing President Harry Truman, "the buck
never stops at his desk."
Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical
showman diva , behaving
in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than
a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians.
3- Trump VS the media and the journalists
Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who rarely holds scheduled press conferences. Why would he, since he considers journalists
to be his "enemies"! It doesn't seem to matter to him that freedom of the press is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution by the First
Amendment. He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if
he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication.
The ABC News network
has calculated that, as of last July, Trump has tweeted more than 3,500 times, slightly more than seven tweets a day. How could he
have time left to do anything productive! Coincidently, Donald Trump's number of tweets is not far away from the number of outright
lies and misleading claims that he has told and made since his inauguration.
The Washington Post has counted no less than 3,251 lies or misleading claims of his, through the end of May of this year, --
an average of 6.5 such misstatements per day of his presidency. Fun fact: Trump seems to accelerate the pace of his lies. Last year,
he told 5.5 lies per day, on average. Is it possible to have a more cynical view of politics!
The media in general, (and
not only American ones), then serve more or less voluntarily as so many resonance boxes for his daily 'tweets', most of which
are often devoid of any thought and logic.
Such a practice has the consequence of demeaning the public discourse in the pursuit of the common good and the general welfare
of the people to the level of a frivolous private enterprise, where expertise, research and competence can easily be replaced by
improvisation, whimsical arbitrariness and charlatanry. In such a climate, only the short run counts, at the expense of planning
for the long run.
Conclusion
All this leads to this conclusion: Trump's approach is not the way to run an efficient government. Notwithstanding the U.S. Constitution
and what it says about the need to have " checks and balance s" among different government branches, President Donald Trump
has de facto pushed aside the U.S. Congress and the civil servants in important government Departments, even his own
Cabinet
, whose formal meetings under Trump have been little more than photo-up happenings, to grab the central political stage for himself.
If such a development does not represent an ominous threat to American democracy, what does?
The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current
administration and for future ones.
"... Serious border enforcement, demanding our wealthy allies do more for their own security, infrastructure investment, the (campaign's) refutation of Reaganomics, acknowledging the costs of globalism, calling BS on all of the dominant left PC pieties and lies, were themes of Trump's campaign that were of value. ..."
Serious border enforcement, demanding our wealthy allies do more for their own security,
infrastructure investment, the (campaign's) refutation of Reaganomics, acknowledging the
costs of globalism, calling BS on all of the dominant left PC pieties and lies, were themes
of Trump's campaign that were of value.
Trump was able to harness and give voice to some very important energies. But being Trump,
he's poisoned these issues for a couple of generations. No serious leader will be able to
touch these things.
Add this to all the institutional and political ruin he has created.
"... he has brought North Korea away from the edge of nuclear war and established at least tentative diplomatic relations with that nation, something no president has done before him. Against frenzied opposition from the American Establishment, he has somewhat softened U.S. relations with Russia. ..."
"... On domestic and environmental matters, Trump is pro-plutocrat, a climate change denier, and the installer of arch-reactionary Supreme Court justices. But this is more a function of the current national Republican party than of Trump himself. Any of Trump's opponents in the 2016 primaries would have followed the same policies. ..."
Trump is not crazy at all. He is the proponent of a particular philosophy, Trumpism, which
he follows very clearly and consistently.
As president, he has had significant successes. Notably, he has brought North Korea away
from the edge of nuclear war and established at least tentative diplomatic relations with
that nation, something no president has done before him. Against frenzied opposition from the
American Establishment, he has somewhat softened U.S. relations with Russia.
On domestic and environmental matters, Trump is pro-plutocrat, a climate change denier,
and the installer of arch-reactionary Supreme Court justices. But this is more a function of
the current national Republican party than of Trump himself. Any of Trump's opponents in the
2016 primaries would have followed the same policies.
Trumpism is undeniably a form of near-fascism. Trump has followed viciously anti-immigrant
tendencies, and this, along with his ties to out-and-out racists, is the worst part of his
presidency. But these horrible aspects do not at all show that he is crazy. He has used them
coldly and calculatedly to gain power.
And while his schtick and bluster are indeed bizarre, he has used them very consistently
to keep a 40%-plus approval rating in the face of an Establishment opposition the like of
which has used against a president at least in our lifetimes.
As I have commented here before, except for Trump's disgusting anti-immigration policies,
George W. Bush was on balance a far worse president.
The powerful always want more power.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- –
June 26, 2016
"Brexit: Are The Serfs Finally Rebelling"?
The establishment are shocked that the ordinary people want out of the European Union
(EU). They just don't realize that people are fed up being used, abused, dictated to, lied
to, manipulated, and forced into an EU dictatorship by treacherous politicians.
These are some of the same politicians who scurry to the meetings of the so-called elites
in Davos, and also attend Bilderberg meetings. And many of them, when they leave politics,
finish up on the boards of banks and multi-national corporations with the rest of the
money-manipulating bandits that got bailed out with taxpayers' dollars, some of whom, I
believe, should be in jail .
This is partially incorrect view on Trump foreign policy. At the center of
which is careful retreat for enormous expenses of keeping the global neoliberal
empire, plus military Keyseanism to revive the us economy. Which means
tremendous pressure of arm sales as the only way to improve trade balance.
NATO was always an instrument of the USA hegemony,
so Trump behavior is perfectly compatible with this view -- he just downgraded vassals
refusing usual formal respect for them, as they do no represent independent nations.
That's why he addressed them with the contempt. He aptly remarked that German stance
of relying on Russia hydrocarbons and still claiming the it needs the USA defense
is pure hypocrisy. On the other side china, Russia and North Korea can't be considered
the USA vassals.
China is completely dependent on the USA for advanced technologies so their
dreams of becoming the world hegemon is such exist are premature.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington's dominance over the world economy had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive edge. ..."
"... By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed "populist" Donald Trump to power. ..."
"... Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus. ..."
"... On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent. ..."
"... Instead of reigning confidently over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy, Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests. ..."
"... Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed) advantage of the United States. ..."
"... As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous world, filled with a wide range of threats." ..."
"... Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation for Washington's global power since the 1950s ..."
"... Donald Trump acted more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. ..."
"... Beijing's low-cost infrastructure loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding construction of the Mediterranean's busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England, a $6 billion railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70% percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market without peer on the planet. ..."
"... In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters opened by global warming, Beijing began planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious Russian and Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's northern coast to Europe. ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. ..."
"... In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every successful empire," observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate states and their leaders. ..."
"... China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters, not 26 letters. ..."
"... During Japan's occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed to propagate their similarly particularistic culture. ..."
"... A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful effect." ..."
...Although they started this century on generally amicable terms, China
and the U.S. have, in recent years, moved toward military competition and open
economic conflict. When China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 2001, Washington was confident that Beijing would play by the established
rules and become a compliant member of an American-led international community.
There was almost
no awareness of what might happen when a fifth of humanity joined the world
system as an economic equal for the first time in five centuries.
By the time Xi Jinping became China's seventh president, a decade of rapid
economic growth averaging 11% annually and currency reserves surging toward
an unprecedented $4 trillion had created the economic potential for a rapid,
radical shift in the global balance of power. After just a few months in office,
Xi began tapping those vast reserves to launch a bold geopolitical gambit, a
genuine challenge to U.S. dominion over Eurasia and the world beyond. Aglow
in its status as the world's sole superpower after "winning" the Cold War, Washington
had difficulty at first even grasping such newly developing global realities
and was slow to react.
China's bid couldn't have been more fortuitous in its timing. After nearly
70 years as the globe's hegemon, Washington's dominance over the world economy
had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive
edge.
By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization
that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in
democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed
"populist" Donald Trump to power.
Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive
and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both
Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus.
Within months of Trump's entry into the Oval Office, the world was already
witnessing a sharp rivalry between Xi's advocacy of a new form of global collaboration
and Trump's version of economic nationalism. In the process, humanity seems
to be entering a rare historical moment when national leadership and global
circumstances have coincided to create an opening for a major shift in the nature
of the world order.
Trump's Disruptive Foreign Policy
Despite their constant
criticism of Donald Trump's leadership, few among Washington's corps of
foreign policy experts have grasped his full impact on the historic foundations
of American global power. The world order that Washington built after World
War II rested upon what I've
called a "delicate duality": an American imperium of raw military and economic
power married to a community of sovereign nations, equal under the rule of law
and governed through international institutions such as the United Nations and
the World Trade Organization.
On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier
apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a
global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on
hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first
power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent.
Even after the Cold War ended, former national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski
warned that Washington would remain the world's preeminent power only as
long as it maintained its geopolitical dominion over Eurasia. In the decade
before Trump's election, there were, however, already signs that America's hegemony
was on a downward trajectory as its share of global economic power fell from
50% in 1950 to just
15% in 2017. Many financial forecasts now
project that China will surpass the U.S. as the world's number one economy
by 2030, if not before.
In this era of decline, there has emerged from President Trump's torrent
of tweets and off-the-cuff remarks a surprisingly coherent and grim vision of
America's place in the present world order. Instead of reigning confidently
over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy,
Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly
troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal
trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by
self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests.
Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed)
advantage of the United States. In place of the usual democratic allies
like Canada and Germany, he is trying to weave a web of personal ties to avowedly
nationalist and autocratic leaders of a sort he clearly admires: Vladimir Putin
in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Adel Fatah el-Sisi
in Egypt, and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Instead of old alliances like NATO, Trump favors loose coalitions of like-minded
countries. As he sees it, a resurgent America will carry the world along, while
crushing terrorists and dealing in uniquely personal ways with rogue states
like Iran and North Korea.
His version of a foreign policy has found its fullest
statement in his administration's December 2017 National Security Strategy.
As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous
world, filled with a wide range of threats." But in less than a year of his
leadership, it insisted, "We have renewed our friendships in the Middle East
to help drive out terrorists and extremists America's allies are now contributing
more to our common defense, strengthening even our strongest alliances." Humankind
will benefit from the president's "beautiful vision" that "puts America First"
and promotes "a balance of power that favors the United States." The whole world
will, in short, be "lifted by America's renewal."
Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips
has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly
by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation
for Washington's global power since the 1950s. During the president's first
foreign trip in May 2017, he promptly
voiced withering complaints about the supposed refusal of Washington's European
allies to pay their "fair share" of NATO's military costs, leaving the U.S.
stuck with the bill and, in a fashion unknown to American presidents, refused
even to endorse the alliance's core principle of collective defense. It was
a position so extreme in terms of the global politics of the previous half-century
that he was later forced to formally
back down . (By then, however, he had registered his contempt for those
allies in an unforgettable fashion.)
During a second, no-less-divisive NATO visit in July, he charged that
Germany was "a captive of Russia" and pressed the allies to immediately
double their share of defense spending to a staggering 4% of gross domestic
product (a
level even Washington, with its monumental Pentagon budget, hasn't reached)
-- a demand they all ignored. Just days later, he again questioned the very
idea of a common defense,
remarking that if "tiny" NATO ally Montenegro decided to "get aggressive,"
then "congratulations, you're in World War III."
Moving on to England, he promptly kneecapped close ally Theresa May, telling
a British
tabloid that the prime minister had bungled her country's Brexit withdrawal
from the European Union and "killed off any chance of a vital U.S. trade deal."
He then went on to Helsinki for a summit with Vladimir Putin, where he visibly
abased himself before NATO's nominal nemesis, completely enough that there were
even brief, angry
protests
from leaders of his own party.
During Trump's major Asia tour in November 2017, he
addressed the Asian-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) in Vietnam, offering
an extended "tirade" against multilateral trade agreements, particularly the
WTO. To counter intolerable "trade abuses," such as "product dumping, subsidized
goods, currency manipulation, and predatory industrial policies," he swore that
he would always "put America first" and not let it "be taken advantage of anymore."
Having denounced a litany of trade violations that he termed nothing less than
"economic aggression" against America, he
invited everyone there to share his "Indo-Pacific dream" of the world as
a "beautiful constellation" of "strong, sovereign, and independent nations,"
each working like the United States to build "wealth and freedom."
Responding to such a display of narrow economic nationalism from the globe's
leading power, Xi Jinping had a perfect opportunity to play the world statesman
and he took it,
calling upon APEC to support an economic order that is "more open, inclusive,
and balanced." He spoke of China's future economic plans as an historic bid
for "interconnected development to achieve common prosperity on the Asian, European,
and African continents."
As China has lifted 60 million of its own people out of poverty in just a
few years and was committed to its complete eradication by 2020, so he urged
a more equitable world order "to bring the benefits of development to countries
across the globe." For its part, China, he assured his listeners, was ready
to make "$2 trillion of outbound investment" -- much of it for the development
of Eurasia and Africa (in ways, of course, that would link that vast region
more closely to China). In other words, he sounded like a twenty-first century
Chinese version of a twentieth-century American president, while Donald
Trump
acted
more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. As
if to put another nail in the coffin of American global dominion, the remaining
11 Trans-Pacific trade pact partners, led by Japan and Canada,
announced major progress in finalizing that agreement -- without the United
States.
In addition to undermining NATO, America's Pacific alliances, long its historic
fulcrum for the defense of North America and the dominance of Asia, are eroding,
too. Even after 10 personal meetings and frequent phone calls between Japan's
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump during his first 18 months in office,
the president's America First trade policy has
placed a "major strain" on Washington's most crucial alliance in the region.
First, he ignored Abe's
pleas and cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and then, as
if his message hadn't been strong enough, he promptly imposed heavy
tariffs on Japanese steel imports. Similarly, he's
denounced the Canadian prime minister as "dishonest" and
mimicked Indian Prime Minister Modi's accent, even as he made chummy with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and then
claimed ,
inaccurately , that his country was "no longer a nuclear threat."
It all adds up to a formula for further decline at a faster pace.
Beijing's Grand Strategy
While Washington's influence in Asia recedes, Beijing's grows ever stronger.
As China's currency reserves
climbed rapidly from $200 billion in 2001 to a peak of $4 trillion in 2014,
President Xi launched a new initiative of historic import. In September 2013,
speaking in Kazakhstan, the heart of Asia's ancient Silk Road caravan route,
he
proclaimed a "one belt, one road initiative" aimed at economically integrating
the enormous Eurasian land mass around Beijing's leadership. Through "unimpeded
trade" and infrastructure investment, he suggested, it would be possible to
connect "the Pacific and the Baltic Sea" in a proposed "economic belt along
the Silk Road," a region "inhabited by close to 3 billion people." It could
become, he predicted, "the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential."
Within a year, Beijing had
established a Chinese-dominated Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank
with 56 member nations and an impressive $100 billion in capital, while launching
its own $40 billion Silk Road Fund for
private equity projects. When China convened what it called a "belt and
road summit" of 28 world leaders in Beijing in May 2017, Xi could, with good
reason,
hail his initiative as the "project of the century."
Although the U.S. media has often described the individual projects involved
in his "one belt, one road" project as
wasteful ,
sybaritic ,
exploitative , or even
neo-colonial , its sheer scale and scope merits closer consideration. Beijing
is expected to
put a mind-boggling $1.3 trillion into the initiative by 2027, the largest
investment in human history, more than 10 times the famed American Marshall
Plan, the only comparable program, which
spent a more modest $110 billion (when adjusted for inflation) to rebuild
a ravaged Europe after World War II.
Beijing's low-cost infrastructure
loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding
construction of the Mediterranean's
busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England,
a $6 billion
railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport
corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments
could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70%
percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market
without peer on the planet.
Underlying this flurry of flying dirt and flowing concrete, the Chinese leadership
seems to have a design for transcending the vast distances that have historically
separated Asia from Europe. As a start, Beijing is building a comprehensive
network of trans-continental gas and oil pipelines to import fuels from Siberia
and Central Asia for its own population centers. When the system is complete,
there will be an integrated inland energy grid (including Russia's extensive
network of pipelines) that will extend 6,000 miles across Eurasia, from the
North Atlantic to the South China Sea. Next, Beijing is working to link Europe's
extensive rail network with its own expanded high-speed rail system via transcontinental
lines through Central Asia, supplemented by spur lines running due south to
Singapore and southwest through Pakistan.
Finally, to facilitate sea transport around the sprawling continent's southern
rim, China has already bought into or is in the process of building more than
30 major port facilities, stretching from the Straits of Malacca across
the Indian Ocean, around Africa, and along
Europe's extended coastline. In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters
opened by global warming, Beijing began
planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious
Russian and
Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's
northern coast to Europe.
Though Eurasia is its prime focus, China is also pursuing economic expansion
in Africa and Latin America to create what might be dubbed the strategy of the
four continents. To tie Africa into its projected Eurasian network, Beijing
already had doubled its
annual trade there by 2015 to $222 billion, three times that of the United
States, thanks to a massive infusion of capital expected to reach a trillion
dollars by 2025. Much of it is financing the sort of commodities extraction
that has already made the continent China's second largest source of crude oil.
Similarly, Beijing has
invested heavily in Latin America, acquiring, for instance, control over
90% of Ecuador's oil reserves. As a result, its commerce with that continent
doubled in a decade, reaching $244 billion in 2017, topping U.S. trade with
what once was known as its own "backyard."
A Conflict with Consequences
This contest between Xi's globalism and Trump's nationalism has not been
safely confined to an innocuous marketplace of ideas. Over the past four years,
the two powers have engaged in an escalating military rivalry and a cutthroat
commercial competition. Apart from a
shadowy struggle for
dominance in space and cyberspace, there has also been a visible, potentially
volatile naval arms race to control the sea lanes surrounding Asia, specifically
in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. In a 2015 white paper, Beijing
stated
that "it is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force
structure commensurate with its national security." Backed by lethal land-based
missiles, jet fighters, and a global satellite system, China has built just
such a modernized fleet of 320 ships, including nuclear submarines and its first
aircraft carriers.
Within two years, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson
reported
that China's "growing and modernized fleet" was "shrinking" the traditional
American advantage in the Pacific, and warned that "we must shake off any vestiges
of comfort or complacency." Under Trump's latest $700-billion-plus defense budget,
Washington has responded to this challenge with a crash program to build 46
new ships, which will
raise its total to 326 by 2023. As China builds new naval bases bristling
with armaments in the Arabian and South China seas, the U.S. Navy has begun
conducting assertive "freedom-of-navigation" patrols near many of those same
installations, heightening the potential for conflict.
It is in the commercial realm of trade and tariffs, however, where competition
has segued into overt conflict. Acting on his
belief that "trade wars are good and easy to win," President Trump
slapped heavy tariffs, targeted above all at China, on steel imports in
March and, just a few weeks later, punished that country's intellectual property
theft by
promising tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports. When those tariffs
finally hit in July, China immediately
retaliated against what it called "typical trade bullying" with similar
tariffs on U.S. goods. The Financial Times
warned that this "tit-for-tat" can escalate into a "full bore trade war
that will be very bad for the global economy." As Trump
threatened to tax $500 billion more in Chinese imports and
issued confusing, even contradictory demands that made it unlikely Beijing
could ever comply, observers became
concerned that a long-lasting trade war could destabilize what the New
York Times called the "mountain of debt" that sustains much of China's
economy. In Washington, the usually taciturn Federal Reserve chairman issued
an uncommon
warning that "trade tensions could pose serious risks to the U.S. and global
economy."
China as Global Hegemon?
Although a withering of Washington's global reach, abetted and possibly accelerated
by the Trump presidency, is already underway, the shape of any future world
order is still anything but clear. At present, China is the sole state with
the obvious requisites for becoming the planet's new hegemon. Its phenomenal
economic rise, coupled with its expanding military and growing technological
prowess, provide that country with the obvious fundamentals for superpower status.
Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement
of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. Apart
from its rising economic and military clout, China, like its sometime ally Russia,
has a self-referential culture, non-democratic political structures, and a developing
legal system that could deny it some of the key instruments for global leadership.
In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every
successful empire,"
observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate
a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate
states and their leaders. Successful imperial transitions driven by the
hard power of guns and money also require the soft-power salve of cultural suasion
for sustained and successful global dominion. Spain espoused Catholicism and
Hispanism, the Ottomans Islam, the Soviets communism, France a cultural
francophonie , and Britain an Anglophone culture.
Indeed, during its century of global dominion from 1850 to 1940, Britain
was the exemplar par excellence of such soft power, evincing an enticing
cultural ethos of fair play and free markets that it propagated through the
Anglican church, the English language and its literature, and the virtual invention
of modern athletics (cricket, soccer, tennis, rugby, and rowing). Similarly,
at the dawn of its global dominion, the United States courted allies worldwide
through soft-power programs promoting democracy and development. These were
made all the more palatable by the appeal of such things as Hollywood films,
civic organizations like
Rotary International , and popular sports like basketball and baseball.
China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters,
not 26 letters. Its communist ideology and popular culture are remarkably, even
avowedly, particularistic. And you don't have to look far for another Asian
power that attempted Pacific dominion without the salve of soft power. During
Japan's
occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being
hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed
to propagate their similarly particularistic culture.
As command-economy states for much of the past century, neither China nor
Russia developed an independent judiciary or the autonomous rules-based order
that undergirds the modern international system. From the foundation of the
Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1899 through the formation of
the International Court of Justice under the U.N.'s 1945 charter, the world's
nations have aspired to the resolution of conflicts via arbitration or litigation
rather than armed conflict. More broadly, the modern globalized economy is held
together by a web of conventions, treaties, patents, and contracts grounded
in law.
From its founding in 1949, the People's Republic of China gave primacy to
the party and state, slowing the growth of an autonomous legal system and the
rule of law. A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance
came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague
ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China
Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful
effect." Beijing's Foreign Ministry simply
dismissed the adverse decision as "invalid" and without "binding force."
President Xi
insisted China's "territorial sovereignty and maritime rights" were unchanged,
while the state Xinhua news agency
called the ruling "naturally null and void."
If Donald Trump's vision of world disorder is a sign of the American future
and if Beijing's projected $2 trillion in infrastructure investments, history's
largest by far, succeed in unifying the commerce and transport of Asia, Africa,
and Europe, then perhaps the currents of financial power and global leadership
will indeed transcend all barriers and flow inexorably toward Beijing, as if
by natural law. But if that bold initiative ultimately fails, then for the first
time in five centuries the world may face an imperial transition without a clear
successor as global hegemon. Moreover, it will do so on a planet where the "
new normal " of
climate change -- the heating of the atmosphere and the
oceans , the intensification of flood, drought, and
fire , the rising seas that will
devastate coastal cities, and the
cascading damage to a densely populated world -- could mean that the very
idea of a global hegemon is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Alfred W. McCoy, a
TomDispatch regular , is the Harrington professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity
in the Global Drug Trade , the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture
of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years, and the recently published
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global
Power (Dispatch Books).
That might have been true .then. However, Bannon was never the puppet master (Trump is a
capitalist who has never listened to anyone else apart from his own messy ego in his life: the
idea that he would be a puppet for anyone, Bannon, Putin or whatever, is risible). Without
wanting to raise from the dead the 'Trump is teh Hitler' meme: there is a very very tiny grain
of truth in it, just as there is a very very tiny grain of truth in the right wing idea that
Hitler was a socialist because his party had the word 'socialist' in it. Hitler's initial
programme really did have a tiny element of 'socialism' in it, and some elements of the working
class (shamefully) swallowed the lies and gained him votes.
But it was never real and Hitler was never going to deliver. He dealt with the Brownshirts
(the most authentically 'working class' and 'socialist' part of the Nazi movement) in the Night
of the Long Knives, and from that point on, the 'socialist' parts of the Nazi programme were
steadily ditched, as the regime became more and more strongly right wing throughout the
'30s.
Same with Trump (in this respect only). It's true that in the run up to the election he
threw some scraps to the working class, and some of his protectionist rhetoric swung him some
states in the Rust Belt. Some union supporters, to their shame, trooped along to the White
House soon after.
But Trump, a right wing Republican who is, as I've said, far more orthodox a Republican than
the media would have you believe, was never going to deliver. Bannon was the most 'left wing'
of Trump's circle (and as his admiration for Thatcher makes clear, he was never very left wing)
and he was quickly cast out. Trump did not, in fact, 'drain the swamp' and nor did he try. His
major economic policy has turned out to be .tax cuts for the rich. And he has totally failed to
follow through on the (interesting) isolationist rhetoric he used in his election campaign
(despite the fact that some of us hoped otherwise). He has turned out to be as much of a
warmonger as Obama or even Bush jr (even towards Russia, again despite what the media would
have you believe).
And we haven't heard too much about that 'trillion dollar' investment in infrastructure
recently have we?
The problem is that the Democrats have concentrated on the (mainly trivial and
uninteresting) ways in which Trump differs from previous Republican Presidents (the lies, the
silly tweets, the dubious rhetoric) and have therefore persuaded themselves that this
'unorthodox' President will have to be removed by 'unorthodox means'. 'Tain't so. Trump will be
removed the only way any President (except Nixon) has ever been removed since the dawn of the
Republic: by the opposing party organising, developing a strong program that people can believe
in, and getting out the core vote. No election has ever been won any other way. In the case of
the Democrats this means using the might and money of organised labour and activists to get
candidates who can inspire and who have a genuinely progressive message that resonates with
people.
Democrats, #Russiagate will not save you. Getting your core vote out to vote for a genuinely
progressive candidate, will.
Likbez
@Hidari 08.18.18 at 6:41 pm
Powerful post and a veryclear thinking. Thank you !
Also an interesting analogy with NSDAP the 25-point Plan of 1928
Hitler's initial programme really did have a tiny element of 'socialism' in it, and some
elements of the working class (shamefully) swallowed the lies and gained him votes.
But it was never real, and Hitler was never going to deliver. He dealt with the Brownshirts
(the most authentically 'working class' and 'socialist' part of the Nazi movement) in the Night
of the Long Knives, and from that point on, the 'socialist' parts of the Nazi programme were
steadily ditched, as the regime became more and more strongly right wing throughout the
'30s.
Same with Trump (in this respect only). It's true that in the run-up to the election he
threw some scraps to the working class, and some of his protectionist rhetoric swung him some
states in the Rust Belt. Some union supporters, to their shame, trooped along to the White
House soon after.
Actually NSAP program of 1928 has some political demands which are to the left of Sanders
such as "Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes", ".We demand the nationalization of
all (previous) associated industries (trusts)." and "We demand a division of profits of all
heavy industries."
7.We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood
and way of life for the citizens... ... ...
... ... ...
9.All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10.The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or
physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality,
but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all.
Consequently, we demand:
11.Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12.In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands
of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the
people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13.We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14.We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15.We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16.We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate
communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the
utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or
municipality.
17.We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free
expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and
prevention of all speculation in land.
18.We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the
general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be
punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
... ... ...
21.The state is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and
child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the
legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all
organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
22.We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
23.We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press...
.... ... ...
24.We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as
they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race...
But I think Trump was de-facto impeached with the appointment of Mueller. And that was the
plan ( "insurance" as Strzok called it). Mueller task is just to formalize impeachment.
Pence already is calling the shots in foreign policy via members of his close circle (which
includes Pompeo). The recent "unilateral" actions of State Department are a slap in the face
and, simultaneously, a nasty trap for Trump (he can cancel those sanctions only at a huge
political cost to himself) and are a clear sign that Trump does not control even his
administration. Here is how <a
href="http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2018/august/17/america-the-punitive/">Philip
Giraldi</a> described this obvious slap in the face:
The most recent is the new sanctioning of Russia over the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury
England. For those not following developments, last week Washington abruptly and without any
new evidence being presented, imposed additional trade sanctions on Russia in the belief that
Moscow ordered and carried out the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March
4th. The report of the new sanctions was particularly surprising as Yulia Skripal has recently
announced that she intends to return to her home in Russia, leading to the conclusion that even
one of the alleged victims does not believe the narrative being promoted by the British and
American governments.
Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded with restraint, avoiding a
tit-for-tat, he is reported to be angry about the new move by the US government and now
believes it to be an unreliable negotiating partner. Considering the friendly recent exchanges
between Putin and Trump, the punishment of Russia has to be viewed as something of a surprise,
suggesting that the president of the United States may not be in control of his own foreign
policy.
From the very beginning, any anti-globalization initiative of Trump was sabotaged and often
reversed. Haley is one example here. She does not coordinate some of her actions with Trump or
the Secretary of State unliterary defining the US foreign policy.
Her ambitions worry Trump, but he can so very little: she is supported by Pence and Pence
faction in the administration. Rumors "Haley/Pence 2020" surfaced and probably somewhat poison
atmosphere in the WH.
Add to this that Trump has hostile to him Justice Department, CIA, and FBI. He also does not
control some critical appointments such as the recent appointment of CIA director (who in no
way can be called Trump loyalist).
Which means that in some ways Trump already is a hostage and more ceremonial President than
a real.
"... By Sanjay Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
Grappling with the shock of Donald Trump's election victory, most analysts focus on his
appeal to those in the United States who feel left behind, wish to retrieve a lost social
order, and sought to rebuke establishment politicians who do not serve their interests. In this
respect, the recent American revolt echoes the shock of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom,
but it is of far greater significance because it promises to reshape the entire global order,
and the complaisant forms of thought that accompanied it.
Ideas played an important role in creating the conditions that produced Brexit and Trump.
The 'social sciences' -- especially economics -- legitimated a set of ideas about the economy
that were aggressively peddled and became the conventional wisdom in the policies of mainstream
political parties, to the extent that the central theme of the age came to be that there was no
alternative. The victory of these ideas in politics in turn strengthened the iron-handed
enforcers of the same ideas in academic orthodoxy.
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over the
last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have reigned
for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements. Economics made the case for such
agreements, generally rejecting concerns over labor and environmental standards and giving
short shrift to the effects of globalization in weakening the bargaining power of workers or
altogether displacing them; to the need for compensatory measures to aid those displaced; and
more generally to measures to ensure that the benefits of growth were shared. For the most
part, economists casually waved aside such concerns, both in their theories and in their policy
recommendations, treating these matters as either insignificant or as being in the jurisdiction
of politicians. Still less attention was paid to crafting an alternate form of globalization,
or to identifying bases for national economic policies taking a less passive view of
comparative advantage and instead aiming to create it.
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook asset
stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and financialization
produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who serviced them in global
cities, alongside gentrification of those cities, proleterianization and lumpenization of
suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization of employment for the bulk of the middle and
working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy in
favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on top of
it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy. Indeed,
it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the efficient-markets
hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through mergers and acquisitions in
the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification of the city through attacks on
rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor markets through the idea that
unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure preferences, etc. The mainstream
political parties, including those historically representing the working and middle classes, in
thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a
share of the promised gains and thus embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to
abandon and to antagonize a large section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the rise
of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can paradoxically
simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty intellectual case made by
many mainstream economists for central bank independence, inflation targeting, debt
sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation and the superiority of private
provision of services including for health, education and welfare, have helped to support
antagonism to governmental activity. Within this perspective, there is limited room for fiscal
or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct governmental role in service provision, even in
the form of productivity-enhancing investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the
shipwreck of 2008 that has caused some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of the
reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his victory
produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism so much as
replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation without a
theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off by
reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations. The second
part of this claim has been pretty thoroughly demolished, so I want to look mainly at the
first. However, as we will see, the corporate tax cuts remain central to the argument.
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off
by reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations.
The emergence of Trumpism signifies deepening of the ideological crisis for the
neoliberalism. Neoclassical economics fell like a house of cards. IMHO Trumpism can be viewed
as a kind of "national neoliberalism" which presuppose rejection of three dogmas of "classic
neoliberalism":
1. Rejection of neoliberal globalization including, but not limited to, free movement
of labor. Attempt to protect domestic industries via tariff barriers.
2. Rejection of excessive financialization and primacy of financial oligarchy.
Restoration of the status of manufacturing, and "traditional capitalists" status in
comparison with financial oligarchy.
3. Rejection of austerity. An attempt to fight "secular stagnation" via Military
Keysianism.
Trumpism sent "Chicago school" line of thinking to the dustbin of history. It exposed
neoliberal economists as agents of financial oligarchy and "Enemy of the American People"
(famous Trump phase about neoliberal MSM).
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over
the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have
reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements. ...
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook
asset stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and
financialization produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who
serviced them in global cities, alongside gentrification of those cities,
proletarianization and lumpenization of suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization
of employment for the bulk of the middle and working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy
in favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on
top of it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten
far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy.
Indeed, it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the
efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through
mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification
of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor
markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure
preferences, etc. The mainstream political parties, including those historically
representing the working and middle classes, in thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market
fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a share of the promised gains and thus
embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to abandon and to antagonize a large
section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the
rise of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can
paradoxically simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty
intellectual case made by many mainstream economists for central bank independence,
inflation targeting, debt sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation
and the superiority of private provision of services including for health, education and
welfare, have helped to support antagonism to governmental activity. Within this
perspective, there is limited room for fiscal or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct
governmental role in service provision, even in the form of productivity-enhancing
investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the shipwreck of 2008 that has caused
some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of
the reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his
victory produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism
so much as replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation
without a theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens'
political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while
indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low
measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity
of living in hollowed-out communities.
Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden
theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological
and charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics,
were altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics
hardly registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the
U.S.) emerged across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the
analysts' lack of explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such
movements -- the obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people,
inconsistently and unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was
little explored. The failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative
data provided by polling, 'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be
captured through open-eyed experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for
forms of understanding that can comprehend the currents within the human person, and go
beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream social science has offered few if any resources to
understand, let alone challenge, illiberal majoritarianism, now a world-remaking
phenomenon.
Why, then, would a coalition of leftish and right-wing patriots not join in
denouncing a leader who seemed to put Russia's interests ahead of those of his own country?
Sorry to say, things are not so simple. Look a bit more closely at what holds the anti-Trump
foreign policy coalition together, and you will discover a missing reality that virtually no
one will acknowledge directly: the existence of a beleaguered but still potent American Empire
whose junior partner is Europe. What motivates a broad range of the President's opponents,
then, is not so much the fear that he is anti-American as the suspicion that he is
anti-Empire.
Of course, neither liberals nor conservatives dare to utter the "E-word." Rather, they argue
in virtually identical terms that Trump's foreign and trade policies are threatening the
pillars of world order: NATO, the Group of Seven, the World Trade Organization, the
International Monetary Fund, the OSCE, and so forth. These institutions, they claim, along with
American military power and a willingness to use it when necessary, are primarily responsible
for the peaceful, prosperous, free, and democratic world that we have all been privileged to
inhabit since the Axis powers surrendered to the victorious Allies in 1945.
The fear expressed plainly by The New York Times 's David Leonhardt, a
self-described "left-liberal," is that "Trump wants to destroy the Atlantic Alliance." Seven
months earlier, this same fear motivated the arch-conservative National Review to
editorialize that, "Under Trump, America has retreated from its global and moral leadership
roles, alienated its democratic allies, and abandoned the bipartisan defense of liberal ideals
that led to more than 70 years of security and prosperity." All the critics would agree with
Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of the Munich Security Conference, who recently stated, "Let's face
it. Mr. Trump's core beliefs conflict with the foundations of Western grand strategy since the
mid-1940's."
"Western grand strategy," of course, is a euphemism for U.S. global hegemony – world
domination, to put it plainly. In addition to peace and prosperity (mainly for privileged
groups in privileged nations), this is the same strategy which since 1945 has given the world
the Cold War, the specter of a nuclear holocaust, and proxy wars consuming between 10 and 20
million lives in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
and Yemen. Its direct effects include the overthrow of elected governments in Guatemala, Iran,
Lebanon, Congo, Nigeria, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Granada, Ukraine, et al.;
the bribery of public officials and impoverishment and injury of workers and farmers world-wide
as a result of exploitation and predatory "development" by Western governments and
mega-corporations; the destruction of natural environments and exacerbation of global climate
change by these same governments and corporations; and the increasing likelihood of new
imperialist wars caused by the determination of elites to maintain America's global supremacy
at all costs.
It is interesting that most defenders of the Western Alliance (and its Pacific equivalent:
the more loosely organized anti-Chinese alliance of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand,
and South Korea) virtually never talk about American hegemony or the gigantic military
apparatus (with more than 800 U.S. bases in 60 or so nations and a military-industrial complex
worth trillions) that supports it. Nor is the subject of empire high on Mr. Trump's list of
approved twitter topics, even when he desecrates NATO and other sacred cows of the Alliance.
There are several reasons for this silence, but the most important, perhaps, is the need to
maintain the pretense of American moral superiority: the so-called "exceptionalist" position
that inspires McCain to attack Trump for "false equivalency" (the President's statement in
Helsinki that both Russia and the U.S. have made mistakes), and that leads pundits left and
right to argue that America is not an old-style empire seeking to dominate, but a new-style
democracy seeking to liberate.
The narrative you will hear repeated ad nauseum at both ends of the liberal/conservative
spectrum tells how the Yanks, who won WW II with a little help from the Russians and other
allies, and who then thoroughly dominated the world both economically and militarily,
could have behaved like vengeful conquerors, but instead devoted their resources and
energies to spreading democracy, freedom, and the blessings of capitalism around the world. Gag
me with a Tomahawk cruise missile! What is weird about this narrative is that it "disappears"
not only the millions of victims of America's wars but the very military forces that
nationalists like Trump claim deserve to be worshipfully honored. Eight hundred bases? A
million and a half troops on active duty? Total air and sea domination? I'm shocked . . .
shocked!
In fact, there are two sorts of blindness operative in the current U.S. political
environment. The Democratic Party Establishment, now swollen to include a wide variety of
Russia-haters, globalizing capitalists, and militarists, is blind (or pretends to be) to the
connection between the "Western Alliance" and the American Empire. The Trump Party (which I
expect, one of these days, to shed the outworn Republican label in favor of something more
Berlusconi-like, say, the American Greatness Party) is blind – or pretends to be –
to the contradiction between its professed
"Fortress America" nationalism and the reality of a global U.S. imperium.
This last point is worth emphasizing. In a recent article in The Nation , Michael
Klare, a writer I generally admire, claims to have discovered that there is really a method to
Trump's foreign policy madness, i.e., the President favors the sort of "multi-polar" world,
with Russia and China occupying the two other poles, that Putin and Xi Jinping have long
advocated. Two factors make this article odd as well as interesting. First, the author argues
that multi-polarity is a bad idea, because "smaller, weaker states, and minority peoples
everywhere will be given even shorter shrift than at present when caught in any competitive
jousting for influence among the three main competitors (and their proxies)." Wha? Even shorter
shrift than under unipolarity? I think not, especially considering that adding new poles (why
just three, BTW? What about India and Brazil?) gives smaller states and minority peoples many
more bargaining options in the power game.
More important, however, Trump's multi-polar/nationalist ideals are clearly contradicted by
his determination to make American world domination even more overwhelming by vastly increasing
the size of the U.S. military establishment. Klare notes, correctly, that the President has
denounced the Iraq War, criticized American "overextension" abroad, talked about ending the
Afghan War, and declared that the U.S. should not be "the world's policeman." But if he wants
America to become a mere Great Power in a world of Great Powers, Trump will clearly have to do
more than talk about it. He will have to cut the military budget, abandon military bases,
negotiate arms control agreements, convert military-industrial spending to peaceful uses, and
do all sorts of other things he clearly has no intention of doing. Ever.
No – if the Western Alliance, democratic values, and WTO trade rules provide
ideological cover and junior partners for American global hegemony, "go-it-alone" nationalism,
multi-polarity, and Nobel Peace Prize diplomatic efforts provide ideological cover for . . .
American global hegemony! This can be seen most clearly in the case of Iran, against whom Trump
has virtually declared war. He would like to avoid direct military involvement there, of
course, but he is banking on threats of irresistible "fire and fury" to bring the Iranians to
heel. And if these threats are unavailing? Then – count on it! – the Empire will
act like an empire, and we will have open war.
In fact, Trump and his most vociferous critics and supporters are unknowingly playing the
same game. John Brennan, meet Steve Bannon! You preach very different sermons, but you're
working for the same god. That deity's name changes over the centuries, but we worship him
every time we venerate symbols of military might at sports events, pay taxes to support U.S.
military supremacy, or pledge allegiance to a flag. The name unutterable by both Trump and his
enemies is Empire.
What do we do with the knowledge that both the Tweeter King and the treason-baiting
coalition opposing him are imperialists under the skin? Two positions, I think, have to be
rejected. One is the Lyndon Johnson rationale: since Johnson was progressive on domestic
issues, including civil rights and poverty, that made him preferable to the Republicans, even
though he gave us the quasi-genocidal war in Indochina. The other position is the diametric
opposite: since Trump is less blatantly imperialistic than most Democratic Party leaders, we
ought to favor him, despite his billionaire-loving, immigrant-hating, racist and misogynist
domestic policies. Merely to say this is to refute it.
My own view is that anti-imperialists ought to decline to choose between these alternatives.
We ought to name the imperial god that both Trump and his critics worship and demand
that the party that we work and vote for renounce the pursuit of U.S. global hegemony.
Immediately, this means letting self-proclaimed progressives or libertarians in both major
parties know that avoiding new hot and cold wars, eliminating nuclear weapons and other WMD,
slashing military spending, and converting war production to peaceful uses are top priorities
that must be honored if they are to get our support. No political party can deliver peace and
social justice and maintain the Empire at the same time. If neither Republicans nor Democrats
are capable of facing this reality, we will have to create a new party that can.
Notes.
[1]
The author is University Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason
University. His most recent book is Resolving Structural Conflicts : How Violent
Systems Can Be Transformed (2017).
Why, then, would a coalition of leftish and right-wing patriots not join in
denouncing a leader who seemed to put Russia's interests ahead of those of his own country?
Sorry to say, things are not so simple. Look a bit more closely at what holds the anti-Trump
foreign policy coalition together, and you will discover a missing reality that virtually no
one will acknowledge directly: the existence of a beleaguered but still potent American Empire
whose junior partner is Europe. What motivates a broad range of the President's opponents,
then, is not so much the fear that he is anti-American as the suspicion that he is
anti-Empire.
Of course, neither liberals nor conservatives dare to utter the "E-word." Rather, they argue
in virtually identical terms that Trump's foreign and trade policies are threatening the
pillars of world order: NATO, the Group of Seven, the World Trade Organization, the
International Monetary Fund, the OSCE, and so forth. These institutions, they claim, along with
American military power and a willingness to use it when necessary, are primarily responsible
for the peaceful, prosperous, free, and democratic world that we have all been privileged to
inhabit since the Axis powers surrendered to the victorious Allies in 1945.
The fear expressed plainly by The New York Times 's David Leonhardt, a
self-described "left-liberal," is that "Trump wants to destroy the Atlantic Alliance." Seven
months earlier, this same fear motivated the arch-conservative National Review to
editorialize that, "Under Trump, America has retreated from its global and moral leadership
roles, alienated its democratic allies, and abandoned the bipartisan defense of liberal ideals
that led to more than 70 years of security and prosperity." All the critics would agree with
Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of the Munich Security Conference, who recently stated, "Let's face
it. Mr. Trump's core beliefs conflict with the foundations of Western grand strategy since the
mid-1940's."
"Western grand strategy," of course, is a euphemism for U.S. global hegemony – world
domination, to put it plainly. In addition to peace and prosperity (mainly for privileged
groups in privileged nations), this is the same strategy which since 1945 has given the world
the Cold War, the specter of a nuclear holocaust, and proxy wars consuming between 10 and 20
million lives in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
and Yemen. Its direct effects include the overthrow of elected governments in Guatemala, Iran,
Lebanon, Congo, Nigeria, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Granada, Ukraine, et al.;
the bribery of public officials and impoverishment and injury of workers and farmers world-wide
as a result of exploitation and predatory "development" by Western governments and
mega-corporations; the destruction of natural environments and exacerbation of global climate
change by these same governments and corporations; and the increasing likelihood of new
imperialist wars caused by the determination of elites to maintain America's global supremacy
at all costs.
It is interesting that most defenders of the Western Alliance (and its Pacific equivalent:
the more loosely organized anti-Chinese alliance of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand,
and South Korea) virtually never talk about American hegemony or the gigantic military
apparatus (with more than 800 U.S. bases in 60 or so nations and a military-industrial complex
worth trillions) that supports it. Nor is the subject of empire high on Mr. Trump's list of
approved twitter topics, even when he desecrates NATO and other sacred cows of the Alliance.
There are several reasons for this silence, but the most important, perhaps, is the need to
maintain the pretense of American moral superiority: the so-called "exceptionalist" position
that inspires McCain to attack Trump for "false equivalency" (the President's statement in
Helsinki that both Russia and the U.S. have made mistakes), and that leads pundits left and
right to argue that America is not an old-style empire seeking to dominate, but a new-style
democracy seeking to liberate.
The narrative you will hear repeated ad nauseum at both ends of the liberal/conservative
spectrum tells how the Yanks, who won WW II with a little help from the Russians and other
allies, and who then thoroughly dominated the world both economically and militarily,
could have behaved like vengeful conquerors, but instead devoted their resources and
energies to spreading democracy, freedom, and the blessings of capitalism around the world. Gag
me with a Tomahawk cruise missile! What is weird about this narrative is that it "disappears"
not only the millions of victims of America's wars but the very military forces that
nationalists like Trump claim deserve to be worshipfully honored. Eight hundred bases? A
million and a half troops on active duty? Total air and sea domination? I'm shocked . . .
shocked!
In fact, there are two sorts of blindness operative in the current U.S. political
environment. The Democratic Party Establishment, now swollen to include a wide variety of
Russia-haters, globalizing capitalists, and militarists, is blind (or pretends to be) to the
connection between the "Western Alliance" and the American Empire. The Trump Party (which I
expect, one of these days, to shed the outworn Republican label in favor of something more
Berlusconi-like, say, the American Greatness Party) is blind – or pretends to be –
to the contradiction between its professed
"Fortress America" nationalism and the reality of a global U.S. imperium.
This last point is worth emphasizing. In a recent article in The Nation , Michael
Klare, a writer I generally admire, claims to have discovered that there is really a method to
Trump's foreign policy madness, i.e., the President favors the sort of "multi-polar" world,
with Russia and China occupying the two other poles, that Putin and Xi Jinping have long
advocated. Two factors make this article odd as well as interesting. First, the author argues
that multi-polarity is a bad idea, because "smaller, weaker states, and minority peoples
everywhere will be given even shorter shrift than at present when caught in any competitive
jousting for influence among the three main competitors (and their proxies)." Wha? Even shorter
shrift than under unipolarity? I think not, especially considering that adding new poles (why
just three, BTW? What about India and Brazil?) gives smaller states and minority peoples many
more bargaining options in the power game.
More important, however, Trump's multi-polar/nationalist ideals are clearly contradicted by
his determination to make American world domination even more overwhelming by vastly increasing
the size of the U.S. military establishment. Klare notes, correctly, that the President has
denounced the Iraq War, criticized American "overextension" abroad, talked about ending the
Afghan War, and declared that the U.S. should not be "the world's policeman." But if he wants
America to become a mere Great Power in a world of Great Powers, Trump will clearly have to do
more than talk about it. He will have to cut the military budget, abandon military bases,
negotiate arms control agreements, convert military-industrial spending to peaceful uses, and
do all sorts of other things he clearly has no intention of doing. Ever.
No – if the Western Alliance, democratic values, and WTO trade rules provide
ideological cover and junior partners for American global hegemony, "go-it-alone" nationalism,
multi-polarity, and Nobel Peace Prize diplomatic efforts provide ideological cover for . . .
American global hegemony! This can be seen most clearly in the case of Iran, against whom Trump
has virtually declared war. He would like to avoid direct military involvement there, of
course, but he is banking on threats of irresistible "fire and fury" to bring the Iranians to
heel. And if these threats are unavailing? Then – count on it! – the Empire will
act like an empire, and we will have open war.
In fact, Trump and his most vociferous critics and supporters are unknowingly playing the
same game. John Brennan, meet Steve Bannon! You preach very different sermons, but you're
working for the same god. That deity's name changes over the centuries, but we worship him
every time we venerate symbols of military might at sports events, pay taxes to support U.S.
military supremacy, or pledge allegiance to a flag. The name unutterable by both Trump and his
enemies is Empire.
What do we do with the knowledge that both the Tweeter King and the treason-baiting
coalition opposing him are imperialists under the skin? Two positions, I think, have to be
rejected. One is the Lyndon Johnson rationale: since Johnson was progressive on domestic
issues, including civil rights and poverty, that made him preferable to the Republicans, even
though he gave us the quasi-genocidal war in Indochina. The other position is the diametric
opposite: since Trump is less blatantly imperialistic than most Democratic Party leaders, we
ought to favor him, despite his billionaire-loving, immigrant-hating, racist and misogynist
domestic policies. Merely to say this is to refute it.
My own view is that anti-imperialists ought to decline to choose between these alternatives.
We ought to name the imperial god that both Trump and his critics worship and demand
that the party that we work and vote for renounce the pursuit of U.S. global hegemony.
Immediately, this means letting self-proclaimed progressives or libertarians in both major
parties know that avoiding new hot and cold wars, eliminating nuclear weapons and other WMD,
slashing military spending, and converting war production to peaceful uses are top priorities
that must be honored if they are to get our support. No political party can deliver peace and
social justice and maintain the Empire at the same time. If neither Republicans nor Democrats
are capable of facing this reality, we will have to create a new party that can.
Notes.
[1]
The author is University Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason
University. His most recent book is Resolving Structural Conflicts : How Violent
Systems Can Be Transformed (2017).
"... As widely loathed as the Democratic establishment is, it has been remarkably adept at engineering a reactionary response in favor of establishment forces. Its demonization of Russia! has been approximately as effective at fomenting reactionary nationalism as Mr. Trump's racialized version. Lest this be overlooked, the strategy common to both is the use of oppositional logic through demonization of carefully selected 'others.' ..."
"... What preceded Donald Trump was the Great Recession, the most severe capitalist crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Recession followed approximately three decades of neoliberal de-industrialization, of policies intended to reduce the power of organized labor, reduce working class wages and raise economic insecurity under the antique capitalist theory that destitution motivates workers to produce more for less in return. ..."
"... The illusion / delusion that these problems -- lost livelihoods, homes, social roles, relationships, sense of purpose and basic human dignity -- were solved, or even addressed, by national Democrats, illustrates the class divide at work. The economy that was revived made the rich fabulously rich, the professional / managerial class comfortable and left the other 90% in various stages of economic decline. ..."
"... Asserting this isn't to embrace economic nationalism, support policies until they are clearly stated or trust Mr. Trump's motives. But the move ties analytically to his critique of neoliberal economic policies. As such, it is a potential monkey wrench thrown into the neoliberal world order. ..."
"... Democrats could have confronted the failures of neoliberalism without resorting to economic nationalism (as Mr. Trump did). And they could have confronted unhinged militarism without Mr. Trump's racialized nationalism. But this would have meant confronting their own history. And it would have meant publicly declaring themselves against the interests of their donor base. ..."
"... Mr. Trump's use of racialized nationalism is the primary basis of analyses arguing that he is fascist. Left unaddressed is the fact the the corporate-state form that is the basis of neoliberalism was also the basis of European fascism. Recent Left analysis proceeds from the premise that Trump control of the corporate-state form is fascism, while capitalist class control -- neoliberalism, is something else. ..."
"... Lest this not have occurred, FDR's New Deal was state capitalism approach within the framework of the corporatism (merge of corporations and a state) social formation. The only widely known effort to stage a fascist coup in the U.S. was carried out by Wall Street titans in the 1930s to wrest control from FDR before the New Deal was fully implemented. Put differently, the people who caused the Great Depression wanted to control its aftermath. And they were fascists. ..."
"... As political scientist Thomas Ferguson has been arguing for decades and Gilens and Page have recently chimed in, neither elections nor the public interest hold sway in the corridors of American power. The levers of control are structural -- congressional committee appointments go to the people with lots of money. Capitalist distribution controls the politics. ..."
"... The best-case scenario looking forward is that Donald Trump is successful with rapprochement toward North Korea and Russia and that he throws a monkey wrench into the architecture of neoliberalism so that a new path forward can be built when he's gone. If he pulls it off, this isn't reactionary nationalism and it isn't nothing. ..."
"... Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book ..."
The election of Donald Trump fractured the American Left. The abandonment of class analysis
in response to Mr. Trump's racialized nationalism left identity politics to fill the void. This
has facilitated the rise of neoliberal nationalism, an embrace of the national security state
combined with neoliberal economic analysis put forward as a liberal / Left response to Mr.
Trump's program. The result has been profoundly reactionary.
What had been unfocused consensus around issues of economic justice and ending militarism
has been sharpened into a political program. A nascent, self-styled socialist movement is
pushing domestic issues like single payer health care, strengthening the social safety net and
reversing wildly unbalanced income and wealth distribution, forward. Left unaddressed is how
this program will move forward without a revolutionary movement to act against countervailing
forces.
As widely loathed as the Democratic establishment is, it has been remarkably adept at
engineering a reactionary response in favor of establishment forces. Its demonization of
Russia! has been approximately as effective at fomenting reactionary nationalism as Mr. Trump's
racialized version. Lest this be overlooked, the strategy common to both is the use of
oppositional logic through demonization of carefully selected 'others.'
This points to the most potent fracture on the Left, the question of which is the more
effective reactionary force, the Democrats' neoliberal nationalism or Mr. Trump's racialized
version? As self-evident as the answer apparently is to the liberal / Left, it is only so
through abandonment of class analysis. Race, gender and immigration status are either subsets
of class or the concept loses meaning.
By way of the reform Democrat's analysis , it was the shift of
working class voters from Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016 that swung the election
in Mr. Trump's favor. To the extent that race was a factor, the finger points up the class
structure, not down. This difference is crucial when it comes to the much-abused 'white
working-class' explanation of Mr. Trump's victory.
What preceded Donald Trump was the Great Recession, the most severe capitalist crisis
since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Recession followed approximately three
decades of neoliberal de-industrialization, of policies intended to reduce the power of
organized labor, reduce working class wages and raise economic insecurity under the antique
capitalist theory that destitution motivates workers to produce more for less in
return.
The illusion / delusion that these problems -- lost livelihoods, homes, social roles,
relationships, sense of purpose and basic human dignity -- were solved, or even addressed, by
national Democrats, illustrates the class divide at work. The economy that was revived made the
rich fabulously rich, the professional / managerial class comfortable and left the other 90% in
various stages of economic decline.
Left apparently unrecognized in bourgeois attacks on working class voters is that the
analytical frames at work -- classist identity politics and liberal economics, are ruling class
ideology in the crudest Marxian / Gramscian senses. The illusion / delusion that they are
factually descriptive is a function of ideology, not lived outcomes.
Here's the rub: Mr. Trump's critique of neoliberalism can ] accommodate class analysis
whereas the Democrats' neoliberal nationalism explicitly excludes any notion of economic power,
and with it the possibility of class analysis. To date, Mr. Trump hasn't left this critique
behind -- neoliberal trade agreements are currently being renegotiated.
Asserting this isn't to embrace economic nationalism, support policies until they are
clearly stated or trust Mr. Trump's motives. But the move ties analytically to his critique of
neoliberal economic policies. As such, it is a potential monkey wrench thrown into the
neoliberal world order. Watching the bourgeois Left put forward neoliberal trade theory to
counter it would seem inexplicable without the benefit of class analysis.
Within the frame of identity politics rich and bourgeois blacks, women and immigrants have
the same travails as their poor and working-class compatriots. Ben Carson (black), Melania
Trump (female) and Melania Trump (immigrant) fit this taxonomy. For them racism, misogyny and
xenophobia are forms of social violence. But they aren't fundamental determinants of how they
live. The same can't be said for those brutalized by four decades of neoliberalism
The common bond here is a class war launched from above that has uprooted, displaced and
immiserated a large and growing proportion of the peoples of the West. This experience cuts
across race, gender and nationality making them a subset of class. If these problems are
rectified at the level of class, they will be rectified within the categories of race, gender
and nationality. Otherwise, they won't be rectified.
Democrats could have confronted the failures of neoliberalism without resorting to
economic nationalism (as Mr. Trump did). And they could have confronted unhinged militarism
without Mr. Trump's racialized nationalism. But this would have meant confronting their own
history. And it would have meant publicly declaring themselves against the interests of their
donor base.
Mr. Trump's use of racialized nationalism is the primary basis of analyses arguing that
he is fascist. Left unaddressed is the fact the the corporate-state form that is the basis of
neoliberalism was also the basis of European fascism. Recent Left analysis proceeds from the
premise that Trump control of the corporate-state form is fascism, while capitalist class
control -- neoliberalism, is something else.
Lest this not have occurred, FDR's New Deal was state capitalism approach within the
framework of the corporatism (merge of corporations and a state) social formation. The only
widely known effort to stage a fascist coup in the U.S. was carried out by Wall Street titans
in the 1930s to wrest control from FDR before the New Deal was fully implemented. Put
differently, the people who caused the Great Depression wanted to control its aftermath. And
they were fascists.
More recently, the effort to secure capitalist control has been led by [neo]liberal
Democrats using Investor-State Dispute Resolution (ISDS) clauses in trade agreements. So that
identity warriors might understand the implications, this control limits the ability of
governments to rectify race and gender bias because supranational adjudication can overrule
them.
So, is race and / or gender repression any less repressive because capitalists control the
levers? Colonial slave-masters certainly thought so. The people who own sweatshops probably
think so. Most slumlords probably think so. Employers who steal wages probably think so. The
people who own for-profit prisons probably think so. But these aren't 'real' repression, are
they? Where's the animosity?
As political scientist Thomas Ferguson
has been arguing for decades and
Gilens and Page have recently chimed in, neither elections nor the public interest hold
sway in the corridors of American power. The levers of control are structural -- congressional
committee appointments go to the people with lots of money. Capitalist distribution controls
the politics.
The liberal explanation for this is 'political culture.' The liberal solution is to change
the political culture without changing the economic relations that drive the culture. This is
also the frame of identity politics. The presence of a desperate and destitute underclass
lowers working class wages (raising profits), but ending racism is a matter of changing
minds?
This history holds an important lesson for today's nascent socialists. The domestic programs
recently put forward, as reasonable and potentially useful as they are, resemble FDR's effort
to save capitalism, not end it. The time to implement these programs was when Wall Street was
flat on its back, when it could have been more. This is the tragedy of betrayal by Barack Obama
his voters.
Despite the capitalist rhetoric at the time, the New Deal wasn't 'socialism' because it
never changed control over the means of production, over American political economy. Internal
class differences were reduced through redistribution, but brutal and ruthless imperialism
proceeded apace overseas.
The best-case scenario looking forward is that Donald Trump is successful with
rapprochement toward North Korea and Russia and that he throws a monkey wrench into the
architecture of neoliberalism so that a new path forward can be built when he's gone. If he
pulls it off, this isn't reactionary nationalism and it isn't nothing.
Otherwise, the rich have assigned the opining classes the task of defending their realm.
Step 1: divide the bourgeois into competing factions. Step 2: posit great differences between
them that are tightly circumscribed to prevent history from inconveniently intruding. Step 3:
turn these great differences into moral absolutes so that they can't be reconciled within the
terms given. Step 4: pose a rigged electoral process as the only pathway to political
resolution. Step 5: collect profits and repeat. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Rob Urie
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His bookZen Economicsis
published by CounterPunch Books.
We are in the point when capitalist system (which presented itself as asocial system that created a large middle class)
converted into it opposite: it is social system that could not deliver that it promised and now want to distract people from this
sad fact.
The Trump adopted tax code is a huge excess: we have 40 year when corporation paid less taxes. This is last moment when they
need another gift. To give them tax is crazy excess that reminding
Louis XV of France. Those gains are going in buying of socks. And real growth is happening elsewhere in the world.
After WW2 there were a couple of decades of "golden age" of US capitalism when in the USA middle class increased considerably.
That was result of pressure of working class devastated by Great Depression. Roosevelt decided that risk is too great and he
introduced social security net. But capitalist class was so enraged that they started fighting it almost immediately after the
New Deal was introduced. Business class was enrages with the level of taxes and counterattacked. Tarp act and McCarthyism were
two successful counterattacks. McCarthyism converting communists and socialists into agents of foreign power.
The quality of jobs are going down. That's why Trump was elected... Which is sad. Giving your finger to the
neoliberal elite does not solve their problem
Notable quotes:
"... Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort. But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction. ..."
"... When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety, the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. ..."
"... Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem. It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it to rot, right behind the facade. ..."
"... The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage of this moment, grab it all before it disappears. ..."
In another interesting interview with Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff explains why the Trump presidency is the last resort of a system
that is about to collapse:
Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened
in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort.
But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from
below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction.
So, absent that counter force we are going to see this system spinning out of control and destroying itself in the very way its
critics have for so long foreseen it well might.
When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety,
the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. If we hadn't been a country with two or three decades of
a middle class - working class paid really well - maybe we could have gotten away with this. But in a society that has celebrated
its capacity to do what it now fails to do, you have an explosive situation.
Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem.
It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we
need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist
system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it
to rot, right behind the facade.
The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage
of this moment, grab it all before it disappears.
In France, it was said
'Après moi, le déluge' (after me the
catastrophe). The storm will break.
"... A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order ..."
"... The American ruling class turned to neoliberalism after the failure of Keynesianism -- with its emphasis on state intervention and state-led development -- to overcome the economic crisis of the 1970s and restore profitability and growth in the system. Neoliberalism was not a conspiracy hatched by the Chicago School of Economics, but a strategy that developed in response to globalization and the end of the long postwar boom. ..."
"... For a period, the United States did indeed superintend a new global structure of world imperialism. It integrated most of the world's states into the neoliberal order it dubbed the Washington Consensus, using its international financial and trade institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization to compel all nations to adopt neoliberal policies that benefited a handful of powerful players. It used international loans and debt restructuring not only to remove trade and investment restrictions, but also to impose privatization and cuts in health, education, and other vital social services in states all over the world. The Pentagon deployed its military might to police and crush any so-called rogue states like Iraq. ..."
"... The Making of Global Capitalism ..."
"... Washington's attempt to lock in its dominance through its 2003 war and occupation of Iraq backfired. Even before launching the invasion, Bush recognized that the United States needed to do something to contain China and other rising rivals. In a sign of this growing awareness, he and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, rebranded China, which Clinton had called a strategic partner, as a strategic competitor. ..."
"... Bush used 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, as part of a plan for serial "regime change" in the region. If it succeeded, the United States hoped it would be able to control rivals, particularly China, which is dependent on the region's strategic energy reserves. Instead, Washington suffered, in the words of General William Odom, the former head of the National Security Agency, its "greatest strategic disaster in American history." ..."
"... Iran, one of the projected targets for regime change in Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil," emerged as a beneficiary of the war. It secured a new ally in the form of the sectarian Shia fundamentalist regime in Iraq. And while the United States was bogged down in Iraq, China became increasingly assertive throughout the world, establishing new political and economic pacts throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and a number of African countries. ..."
"... Finally, the Great Recession of 2008 hammered the United States and its allies in the EU particularly hard. By contrast, Beijing's massive state intervention in the economy sustained its long boom and lifted the growth rates of countries in Latin America, Australia, Asia, and sections of Africa that exported raw materials to China. ..."
"... Trump's strategy to restore American dominance in the world is economic nationalism. This is the rational kernel within his erratic shell of bizarre tweets and rants. He wants to combine neoliberalism at home with protectionism against foreign competition. It is a position that breaks with the American establishment's grand strategy of superintending free-trade globalization. ..."
"... Demagogic appeals to labor aside, Trump is doing none of this for the benefit of American workers. His program is intended to restore the competitive position of American capital, particularly manufacturing, against its rivals, especially in China but also in Germany. ..."
"... This economic nationalism is paired with a promise to rearm the American military, which he views as having been weakened by Obama. Thus, Trump has announced plans to increase military spending by $54 billion. He wants to use this 9 percent increase in the military budget to build up the Navy and to modernize and expand the nuclear arsenal, even if that provokes other powers to do the same. As he quipped in December, "Let it be an arms race." 21 Trump's fire-breathing chief strategist, former Brietbart editor Steve Bannon, went so far as to promise, "We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years. There's no doubt about that." 22 ..."
"... Trump threatens a significant break with some previously hallowed institutions of US foreign policy. He has called NATO outdated. This declaration is really just a bargaining position to get the alliance's other members to increase their military spending. Thus, both his secretary of state and defense secretary have repeatedly reassured European states that the United States remains committed to NATO. More seriously, he denounced the EU as merely a vehicle for German capital. Thus, he supports various right-wing populist parties in Europe running on a promise to imitate Britain and leave the EU. ..."
"... Trump's "transactional" approach comes out most clearly in his stated approach to international alliances and blocs. He promises to evaluate all multilateral alliances and trade blocs from the standpoint of American interests against rivals. He will scrap some, replacing them with bilateral arrangements, and renegotiate others. Much of the establishment has reacted in horror to these threats, denouncing them as a retreat from Washington's responsibilities to its allies. ..."
"... Hoping that he can split Russia away from China and neutralize it as a lesser power, Trump then wants to confront China with tariffs and military challenges to its assertion of control of the South China Sea. Incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has already threatened to deny China access to its newly-built island bases in the South China Sea. ..."
"... On top of all this, multinational capital opposes his protectionism. Of course almost all capital is more overjoyed at his domestic neoliberalism, a fact demonstrated in the enormous stock market expansion, but they see his proposals of tariffs, renegotiation of NAFTA, and scrapping of the TPP and the TTIP as threats to their global production, service, and investment strategies. They consider his house economist, Peter Navarro, to be a crackpot. ..."
"... Beneath the governmental shell, whole sections of the unelected state bureaucracy -- what has been ominously described as the "deep state" -- also oppose Trump as a threat to their interests. He has openly attacked the CIA and FBI and threatens enormous cuts to the State Department as well as other key bureaucracies responsible for managing state policy at home and abroad. Many of these bureaucrats have engaged in a campaign of leaks, especially of Trump's connections with the Russian state. ..."
"... One of Trump's key allies, Newt Gingrich, gives a sense of how Trump's backers are framing the dispute with these institutions. "We're up against a permanent bureaucratic structure defending itself and quite willing to break the law to do so," he told the New York Times ..."
"... The Democratic Party selectively opposes some of Trump's program. But, instead of attacking him on his manifold reactionary policies, they have portrayed him as Putin's "Manchurian Candidate," posturing as the defenders of US power willing to stand up to Russia. ..."
"... Even if Trump weathers the storm of this resistance from above and below, his foreign policy could flounder on its own internal conflicts and inconsistencies. To take one example: his policy of collaboration with Russia in Syria could flounder on his simultaneous commitment to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. Why? Because Iran is a Russian ally in the region. Most disturbingly, if the Trump administration goes into a deeper crisis, it will double down on its bigoted scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims to deflect attention from its failures. ..."
"... China is accelerating the transformation of its economy. It seeks to push out multinationals that have used it as an export-processing platform and replace them with its own state-owned and private corporations, which, like Germany, will export its surplus manufactured goods to the rest of the world market. 31 No wonder, then, that a survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce found that 80 percent of American multinationals consider China inhospitable for business. ..."
"... China is also aggressively trying to supplant the United States as the economic hegemon in Asia. Immediately after Trump nixed the TPP, China appealed to states in the Asia Pacific region to sign on to its alternative trade treaty, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). China is determined to challenge American imperial rule of the Asia Pacific. Though its navy is far smaller than Washington's, it plans to accelerate efforts to build up its regional naval power against Trump's threats to block Chinese access to the strategic islands in the South China Sea. ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy ..."
"... Wall Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order ..."
"... International Socialism Journal ..."
"... Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance ..."
"... International Socialist Review ..."
"... Imperialism and World Economy, ..."
"... International Socialist Review ..."
"... A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and the State in a Transitional World ..."
The neoliberal world order of free-trade globalization that the United States has pioneered
since the end of the Cold War is in crisis. The global slump, triggered by the 2007 Great
Recession, has intensified competition not only between corporations, but also between the
states that represent them and whose disagreements over the terms of trade have paralyzed the
World Trade Organization. Similar conflicts between states have disrupted regional free-trade
deals and regional blocs. Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement failed to come to a
vote in Congress, and now Trump has scrapped it. The vote for Brexit in the United Kingdom is a
precedent that could lead other states to bolt from the European Union. Rising international
tensions, especially between the United States, China, and Russia, fill the daily
headlines.
Indeed, the world has entered a new period of imperialism. As discussed in previous articles
in this journal, the unipolar world order based on the dominance of the United States, which
has been eroding for some time, has been replaced by an asymmetric multipolar
world order. The United States remains the only superpower, and possesses by far the largest
military reach, but it faces a global rival in China and a host of lesser rivals like Russia.
And the competition between nation-states over the balance of geopolitical and economic power
is intensifying.
The multiple crises and conflicts have also confronted all the world's states with the
largest migration crisis in history. Over fifty million migrants and refugees are fleeing
economies devastated by neoliberalism, the economic crisis, political instability, and in the
case of the Middle East -- especially Syria -- counterrevolution against the Arab Spring
uprisings. The bourgeois establishment and their right-wing challengers have scapegoated these
migrants in country after country.
All of this has destabilized bourgeois politics throughout the world, opening the door to
both the Left and the Right posing as alternatives to the establishment. In the United States,
Donald Trump won the presidency with the promise to "Make America Great Again" by putting
"America First." He threatens to retreat from the post-Cold War grand strategy of the United
States overseeing the international free-trade regime, in favor of economic nationalism and
what has been described as a "transactional" approach to international politics.
While Trump aims to continue certain neoliberal policies at home (such as deregulation,
privatization, and tax cuts for the wealthy), his international policies represent a
significant shift away from global "free trade." He has promised to rip up or renegotiate
free-trade deals and impose protectionist tariffs on economic competitors. To enforce this, he
wants to rearm the American military to push back against all rivals -- China in particular --
and conduct what he depicts in racist fashion a civilizational war against Islam in the Middle
East. He marries this militaristic nationalism to a bigoted campaign of scapegoating against
immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, women, and all other oppressed groups.
Panic in the imperial brain trust
The architects and ideologues of American imperialism recognize that their grand strategy is
in crisis, and worry that Trump's new stand will only magnify it. The Financial Times
' Martin Wolf declares,
We are, in short, at the end of both an economic period -- that of western-led
globalization -- and a geopolitical one -- the post-cold war "unipolar moment" of a US-led
global order. The question is whether what follows will be an unraveling of the post-second
world war era into de-globalization and conflict, as happened in the first half of the 20th
century, or a new period in which non-western powers, especially China and India, play a
bigger role in sustaining a co-operative global order. 1
Obama's favorite neocon Robert Kagan warns that Washington's retreat from managing the world
system risks "backing into World War III," the title of the piece in which he writes:
Think of two significant trend lines in the world today. One is the increasing ambition
and activism of the two great revisionist powers, Russia and China. The other is the
declining confidence, capacity, and will of the democratic world, and especially of the
United States, to maintain the dominant position it has held in the international system
since 1945. As those two lines move closer, as the declining will and capacity of the United
States and its allies to maintain the present world order meet the increasing desire and
capacity of the revisionist powers to change it, we will reach the moment at which the
existing order collapses and the world descends into a phase of brutal anarchy, as it has
three times in the past two centuries. The cost of that descent, in lives and treasure, in
lost freedoms and lost hope, will be staggering. 2
In somewhat more measured tones, the imperial brain trust of American imperialism, the
Council on Foreign Relations, is using their journal, Foreign Affairs , to oppose
Trump and defend the existing neoliberal order with minor modifications. 3 Stewart
Patrick, for example, worries that Trump has laid-out
no broader vision of the Unites States' traditional role as defender of the free world,
much less outline how the country play that part. In foreign policy and economics, he has
made clear that the pursuit of narrow national advantage will guide his policies --
apparently regardless of the impact on the liberal world order that the United States has
championed since 1945. That order was fraying well before November 8. It had been battered
from without by challenges from China and Russia and weakened from within by economic malaise
in Japan and crises in Europe, including the epochal Brexit vote last year. No one knows what
Trump will do as president. But as a candidate, he vowed to shake up world politics by
reassessing long-standing U.S. alliances, ripping up existing U.S. trade deals, raising trade
barriers against China, disavowing the Paris climate agreement, and repudiating the nuclear
accord with Iran. Should he follow through on these provocative plans, Trump will unleash
forces beyond his control, sharpening the crisis of the Western-centered order.
The Council's Gideon Rose fears that Trump is introducing "damaging uncertainty into
everything from international commerce to nuclear deterrence. At worst, it could cause other
countries to lose faith in the order's persistence and start to hedge their bets, distancing
themselves from the Unites States, making side deals with China and Russia, and adopting
beggar-thy-neighbor programs." 4
But the Council and the rest of the foreign policy establishment have little to offer as a
solution to the crisis they describe. For example, the Council on Foreign Relations' president,
Richard Haass's, new book, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of
the Old Order , produces little more than tactical maneuvers designed to incorporate
America's rivals into the existing neoliberal order. 5 But it is within that very
order that the United States has undergone relative decline against its increasingly assertive
rivals, especially China.
Neoliberalism's solution to the crisis last time
The American ruling class turned to neoliberalism after the failure of Keynesianism -- with
its emphasis on state intervention and state-led development -- to overcome the economic crisis
of the 1970s and restore profitability and growth in the system. Neoliberalism was not a
conspiracy hatched by the Chicago School of Economics, but a strategy that developed in
response to globalization and the end of the long postwar boom.
The US ruling class adopted what later came to be known as neoliberalism in coherent form
under the regimes of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain.
6 Neoliberalism had domestic and international dimensions. At home, the mantra was
privatization and deregulation. The ruling class got rid of regulations on capital and launched
a war against workers. They privatized state-run businesses as well as traditionally state-run
institutions like prisons and schools. They busted unions, drove down wages, and cut the
welfare state to ribbons.
Abroad, the United States expanded the program of "free trade" they had pursued since the
end of World War II. Seeking cheap labor, resources, and markets, Washington used its dominance
of international institutions to pry open national economies throughout the world. It aimed
first to incorporate its allies, then its antagonists in this neoliberal world order, with the
promise that it would work in the interests of "the capitalist class" around the world. As
Henry Kissinger once remarked, "What is called globalization is really another name for the
dominant role of the United States." 7 These domestic and international policies
overcame the crises of the 1970s and ushered in a period of economic expansion (interrupted by
a few recessions) that lasted from the early 1980s through to the early 2000s. 8
The brief unipolar moment
Unable to keep pace with the West's economic expansion and the Reagan administration's
massive rearmament program, and beset by its own internal contradictions, the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, and the Cold War's bipolar geopolitical order came to an end. The United
States hoped to establish a new unipolar world order in which it would solidify its position as
the world's sole remaining, and unassailable, superpower.
For a period, the United States did indeed superintend a new global structure of world
imperialism. It integrated most of the world's states into the neoliberal order it dubbed the
Washington Consensus, using its international financial and trade institutions like the IMF,
World Bank, and the World Trade Organization to compel all nations to adopt neoliberal policies
that benefited a handful of powerful players. It used international loans and debt
restructuring not only to remove trade and investment restrictions, but also to impose
privatization and cuts in health, education, and other vital social services in states all over
the world. The Pentagon deployed its military might to police and crush any so-called rogue
states like Iraq.
Amidst the heady days of this unipolar moment, much of the left abandoned the classical
Marxist theory of imperialism developed chiefly by the early twentieth century Russian
revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin. In brief, Lenin and Bukharin argued that
capitalist development transformed economic competition into interstate rivalry and war for the
political and economic division and redivision of the world system between the dominant
capitalist powers vying for hegemony. 9
"The development of world capitalism leads," wrote Bukharin, "on the one hand, to an
internationalization of the economic life and, on the other, to the leveling of economic
differences, and to an infinitely greater degree, the same process of economic development
intensifies the tendency to 'nationalize' capitalist interests, to form narrow 'national'
groups armed to the teeth and ready to hurl themselves at one another at any moment."
10
Imperialism was a product of the interplay between the creation of a world market and the
division of the world between national states, and as such was a product of the system rather
than simply a policy of a particular state or party. This was in contrast to the German
socialist Karl Kautsky, who argued that imperialism was a policy favored by some sections of
the capitalists but which ran against the interests of ruling classes as a whole, which, as a
result of the economic integration of the world market, had a greater interest in peaceful
competition.
The new period of globalized capitalism produced new theories that rejected Lenin and
Bukharin's approach. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argued in their 2000 book that
globalization had replaced imperialism with a new structure of domination they termed empire.
Nonstate networks of power, like international financial institutions such as the IMF and the
World Bank, were now, in an era where states were increasingly powerless, the dominant world
players. 11 "The United States does not, and indeed no nation-state can today, form
the center of an imperialist project," they famously wrote in the preface. 12 Others
took the argument further, maintaining that a system of globalized transnational production and
trade was fast displacing states, including Washington, as influential centers of power.
13
On the other extreme, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin argue in their 2012 book The Making of
Global Capitalism that the American state organized globalization and integrated all the
world's states as vassals of its informal empire. 14 Though diametrically opposed at
the start, these arguments ended with the same conclusion -- inter-imperial rivalries between
the world's leading states, including the potential for them to spill over into military
conflict -- are not a necessary outcome of capitalism; and today those rivalries are a thing of
the past.
The return of rivalry in an asymmetric world order
Developments in the real world -- such as the Bush administration's 2001 invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan, and two years later of Iraq -- viscerally disproved these arguments.
Indeed, changes in the real world were already undermining the foundations of the postwar world
order that Kagan and others are frantically holding up against Trump's "America First"
nationalism.
Washington's drive to cement its hegemony in a unipolar world order was undermined in
several ways. The neoliberal boom from the early 1980s to the 2000s produced new centers of
capital accumulation. China is the paradigmatic example. After it abandoned autarkic state
capitalism in favor of state-managed production for the world market, it transformed itself
from a backwater producer to the new workshop of the world. It vaulted from producing about 1.9
percent 15 of global GDP in 1979 to about 15 percent in 2016. 16 It is
now the second-largest economy in the world and predicted to overtake the United States as the
largest economy in the coming years.
But China was not the sole beneficiary of the neoliberal expansion. Brazil and other
regional economies also developed. And Russia, after suffering an enormous collapse of its
empire and its economic power in the 1990s, managed to rebuild itself as a petro-power with
disproportionate geopolitical influence because of its nuclear arsenal. Of course, whole
sections of the world system did not develop at all, but instead suffered dispossession and
economic catastrophe.
Washington's attempt to lock in its dominance through its 2003 war and occupation of Iraq
backfired. Even before launching the invasion, Bush recognized that the United States needed to
do something to contain China and other rising rivals. In a sign of this growing awareness, he
and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, rebranded China, which Clinton had called a
strategic partner, as a strategic competitor.17
Bush used 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in
Iraq, as part of a plan for serial "regime change" in the region. If it succeeded, the United
States hoped it would be able to control rivals, particularly China, which is dependent on the
region's strategic energy reserves. Instead, Washington suffered, in the words of General
William Odom, the former head of the National Security Agency, its "greatest strategic disaster
in American history."18
Iran, one of the projected targets for regime change in Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil,"
emerged as a beneficiary of the war. It secured a new ally in the form of the sectarian Shia
fundamentalist regime in Iraq. And while the United States was bogged down in Iraq, China
became increasingly assertive throughout the world, establishing new political and economic
pacts throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and a number of African countries.
Russia also took advantage of American setbacks to reassert its power against EU and NATO
expansionism in Eastern Europe. It went to war against US ally Georgia in 2008. In Central
Asia, China and Russia came together to form a new alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. They postured against American imperialism in their own imperial interests.
Finally, the Great Recession of 2008 hammered the United States and its allies in the EU
particularly hard. By contrast, Beijing's massive state intervention in the economy sustained
its long boom and lifted the growth rates of countries in Latin America, Australia, Asia, and
sections of Africa that exported raw materials to China.
This was the high-water mark of the so-called BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and
South Africa. The lesser powers in this bloc hitched their star to Chinese imperialism,
exporting their commodities to fuel China's industrial expansion. Together they launched the
BRICS bank, officially known as the New Development Bank, and China added another, the Asian
Infrastructure Development Bank, as alternatives to the IMF and World Bank. The recent Chinese
slowdown and the consequent drop in commodity prices have, however, hammered the economies of
many of the BRICS.
These developments cracked the unipolar moment and replaced it with today's asymmetric world
order. The United States remains the world's sole superpower; but it now faces an international
rival in China and in lesser powers like Russia. It must also wrestle with regional powers that
pursue their own interests, sometimes in sync with Washington and other times at odds with
it.
Obama's failure to restore dominance
The Obama administration came to power with the hopes of restoring the credibility and
standing of American power in the wake of Bush's disasters in the Middle East. It implemented a
combined program of stimulus and austerity to restore growth and profitability. By imposing a
two-tier wage structure on the auto industry, it set a precedent for competitive
reindustrialization in the United States, and launched the massive fracking expansion to
provide cheap domestic energy to US corporations.
Intending to extract the United States from its costly and inconclusive ground wars in the
Middle East, Obama turned to air power, shifting the focus of the so-called War on Terror to
drone strikes, Special Force operations, and air support for US proxy forces in different
countries.
Once disentangled from Bush's occupations, Obama planned to conduct the ballyhooed "pivot to
Asia" to contain China's ongoing rise, bolster Washington's political and military alliance
with Japan and South Korea, and prevent their economic incorporation into China's growing
sphere of influence. The now dead Trans-Pacific Partnership was meant to ensure American
economic hegemony in the region, which would then be backed up militarily with the deployment
of 60 percent of the US Navy to the Asia Pacific region. 19 Obama also began to push
back against Russian opposition to the EU and NATO expansion into Eastern Europe -- hence the
standoff over Ukraine.
But Obama was unable to fully implement any of this because US forces remained bogged down
in the spiraling crisis in the Middle East. Retreating from the Bush administration's policy of
regime change to balancing between the existing states, Obama, while continuing to support
historic US allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, at the same time struck a deal with Iran
over its nuclear program. But this strategy was undermined by the Arab Spring, the regimes'
counterrevolutions, attempts by regional powers to manipulate the rebellion for their own ends,
and the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The United States has been unable to resolve many of
these developing crises on its own terms.
Now Russia, after having suffered a long-term decline of its power in the region, has
managed to reassert itself through its intervention in Syria in support of Assad's
counterrevolution. It is now a broker in the Syrian "peace process" and a new player in the
broader Middle East.
While the United States continued to suffer relative decline, China and Russia became even
more assertive. Russia took Crimea, which provoked the United States and Germany to impose
sanctions on the Kremlin. China intensified its economic deal making throughout the world,
increasing its foreign direct investment from a paltry $17.2 billion in 2005 to $187 billion in
2015. 20 At the same time, it engaged in a massive buildup of its navy and air force
(though its military is still dwarfed by the US) and constructed new military bases on various
islands to control the shipping lanes, fisheries, and potential oil fields in the South China
Sea.
Obama did manage to oversee the recovery of the US economy, and China has suffered an
economic slowdown. That has dramatically reversed the economic fortunes of the BRICS, in
particular Brazil, which has experienced economic collapse and a right-wing governmental coup.
The drop in oil prices that accompanied the Chinese slowdown also hammered the OPEC states as
well as Russia.
But China's slowdown has not reversed Beijing's economic and geopolitical ascension. In
fact, China is in the process of rebalancing its economy to replace multinational investment,
expand its domestic market, and increase production for export to the rest of the world. The
aim is to increase its ability to compete with the United States and the EU at all levels.
Thus, well before Trump's election, the United States had been mired in foreign policy
problems that it seemed incapable of resolving.
Trump's break with neoliberalism
Trump's strategy to restore American dominance in the world is economic nationalism. This is
the rational kernel within his erratic shell of bizarre tweets and rants. He wants to combine
neoliberalism at home with protectionism against foreign competition. It is a position that
breaks with the American establishment's grand strategy of superintending free-trade
globalization.
Inside the United States, Trump aims to double down on some aspects of neoliberalism. He
plans to cut taxes on the rich, rip up government regulations that "hamper" business interests,
expand Obama's fracking program to provide corporations cheaper energy, and to go after public
sector unions. He also wants to invest $1 trillion to modernize the country's decrepit
infrastructure. While his Gestapo assault on immigrants is less popular among the business
class, they are salivating over the tax and regulatory cuts. Trump hopes with these economic
carrots to lure American manufacturing companies back to the United States.
At the same time, however, Trump wants to upend the neoliberal Washington Consensus. He is
threatening to impose tariffs on American corporations that move their production to other
countries. He has already nixed the TPP and intends to do the same to the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe. He promises to renegotiate NAFTA with Mexico and
Canada to secure better terms, and, in response to Chinese and EU protectionism, he threatens
to impose a border tax of 45 percent on Chinese and others countries' exports to the United
States. These measures could trigger a trade war.
Demagogic appeals to labor aside, Trump is doing none of this for the benefit of American
workers. His program is intended to restore the competitive position of American capital,
particularly manufacturing, against its rivals, especially in China but also in Germany.
This economic nationalism is paired with a promise to rearm the American military, which he
views as having been weakened by Obama. Thus, Trump has announced plans to increase military
spending by $54 billion. He wants to use this 9 percent increase in the military budget to
build up the Navy and to modernize and expand the nuclear arsenal, even if that provokes other
powers to do the same. As he quipped in December, "Let it be an arms race." 21
Trump's fire-breathing chief strategist, former Brietbart editor Steve Bannon, went so far as
to promise, "We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years. There's no doubt
about that." 22
Trump also plans to intensify what he sees as a civilizational war with Islam. This will
likely involve ripping up the nuclear deal with Iran, intensifying the war on ISIS in Iraq and
Syria, and conducting further actions against al Qaeda internationally. It will also likely
involve doubling down on Washington's alliance with Israel. Trump's appointment as ambassador
to Israel, David Friedman, is actually to the right of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. 23 Trump has already begun escalating the ongoing war on Muslims
conducted by the last two administrations, with his executive orders that are in effect an
anti-Muslim ban and have increased the profiling, surveillance, and harassment of Muslims
throughout the country.
To pay for this military expansion, the Trump administration, in Bannon's phrase, plans to
carry out the "deconstruction of the administrative state." Thus, the administration has
appointed heads of departments, like Ed Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose
main purpose is to gut them. 24 No doubt this will entail massive cuts to social
programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
Trump threatens a significant break with some previously hallowed institutions of US foreign
policy. He has called NATO outdated. This declaration is really just a bargaining position to
get the alliance's other members to increase their military spending. Thus, both his secretary
of state and defense secretary have repeatedly reassured European states that the United States
remains committed to NATO. More seriously, he denounced the EU as merely a vehicle for German
capital. Thus, he supports various right-wing populist parties in Europe running on a promise
to imitate Britain and leave the EU.
Trump's "transactional" approach comes out most clearly in his stated approach to
international alliances and blocs. He promises to evaluate all multilateral alliances and trade
blocs from the standpoint of American interests against rivals. He will scrap some, replacing
them with bilateral arrangements, and renegotiate others. Much of the establishment has reacted
in horror to these threats, denouncing them as a retreat from Washington's responsibilities to
its allies.
In a departure from Obama's policy toward Russia, Trump intends to create a more
transactional relationship with the Kremlin. He does not view Russia as the main threat; he
believes that is China. In addition to considering cutting a deal with Russia to drop sanctions
over its seizure of Crimea, he wants to collaborate with Putin in a joint war against ISIS in
Syria.
Hoping that he can split Russia away from China and neutralize it as a lesser power, Trump
then wants to confront China with tariffs and military challenges to its assertion of control
of the South China Sea. Incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has already threatened to
deny China access to its newly-built island bases in the South China Sea.
Trump's economic nationalism leads directly to his "fortress America" policies. These
policies chiefly target Muslims and immigrants, but they should not be seen in isolation from
other domestic policies. With the wave of protests against his attacks that emerged from the
moment he stepped into office, Trump and his allies in state governments have introduced bills
that impose increasing restrictions on the right to protest and give the police a license for
repression with impunity. Thus the corollary of his "America First" imperialism abroad is
authoritarianism at home.
Can Trump succeed?
Trump faces a vast array of obstacles that could stop him from implementing his new
strategy. To begin with, he is an unpopular president with an approval rating hovering below 40
percent in his first months in office. He and his crony capitalist cabinet will no doubt face
many scandals, compromising their ability to push through their agenda.
He may be his own biggest obstacle. His 6 A.M. tweets are signs of someone more concerned
with his celebrity status than imperial statecraft. He has already lost his national security
adviser, Michael Flynn, due to Flynn's failure to disclose his communication with Russian
diplomats during the campaign, and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions took heat on similar
charges, forcing him to recuse himself from any investigations of the Trump campaign with the
Kremlin.
There are also real economic challenges to his ability to follow through on his economic
program. He simultaneously promises to cut taxes for the wealthy, spend hundreds of millions on
domestic infrastructure (not to mention the billions it would cost to build a wall along the
US–Mexico border), and cut the deficit. This does not square with economic reality.
On top of all this, multinational capital opposes his protectionism. Of course almost all
capital is more overjoyed at his domestic neoliberalism, a fact demonstrated in the enormous
stock market expansion, but they see his proposals of tariffs, renegotiation of NAFTA, and
scrapping of the TPP and the TTIP as threats to their global production, service, and
investment strategies. They consider his house economist, Peter Navarro, to be a crackpot.
25
Even his cabinet opposes much of his program. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson testified
that he supports the TTP and American obligations to its NATO allies in Europe, including
recent deployments of American troops to Poland. And Trump's Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog"
Mattis disagrees with Trump's proposal to rip up the nuclear treaty with Iran.
Beneath the governmental shell, whole sections of the unelected state bureaucracy -- what
has been ominously described as the "deep state" -- also oppose Trump as a threat to their
interests. He has openly attacked the CIA and FBI and threatens enormous cuts to the State
Department as well as other key bureaucracies responsible for managing state policy at home and
abroad. Many of these bureaucrats have engaged in a campaign of leaks, especially of Trump's
connections with the Russian state.
One of Trump's key allies, Newt Gingrich, gives a sense of how Trump's backers are framing
the dispute with these institutions. "We're up against a permanent bureaucratic structure
defending itself and quite willing to break the law to do so," he told the New York
Times . 26 Thus, the core of the capitalist state is at least attempting to
constrain Trump, bring down some of his appointees and may, if they see it as necessary, do the
same to Trump himself. At the very least, these extraordinary divisions at the top create a
sense of insecurity, and open up space for questioning and struggle from below.
The Democratic Party selectively opposes some of Trump's program. But, instead of attacking
him on his manifold reactionary policies, they have portrayed him as Putin's "Manchurian
Candidate," posturing as the defenders of US power willing to stand up to Russia. As Glenn
Greenwald writes, the Democrats are
not "resisting" Trump from the left or with populist appeals -- by, for instance, devoting
themselves toprotection ofWall Street and environmental regulations
under attack , or supporting the revocation of jobs-killing free trade
agreements, or demanding that Yemini civilians not be massacred. Instead, they're attacking him
on the grounds of insufficient nationalism, militarism, and aggression: equating a desire to
avoid confrontation with Moscow as a form of treason (just like they did when they were the
leading Cold Warriors).
This is why they're finding such common cause with the
nation's most bloodthirsty militarists -- not because it's an alliance of convenience but
rather one of shared convictions (indeed, long before Trump,
neocons were planning a re-alignment with Democrats under a Clinton presidency).
27
Republicans also object to many of Trump's initiatives. For example, John McCain has
attacked his cozy relationship with the Kremlin. And neoliberals in the Republican Party
support the TPP and free trade globalization in general. The neocon Max Boot has gone so far as
to support the Democrat's call for a special counsel to investigate Trump's collusion with
Putin. He explains,
There is a good reason why Trump and his partisans are so apoplectic about the prospect of
a special counsel, and it is precisely why it is imperative to appoint one: because otherwise
we will never know the full story of the Kremlin's tampering with our elections and of the
Kremlin's connections with the president of the United States. As evidenced by his desperate
attempts to change the subject, Trump appears petrified of what such a probe would reveal.
28
Even if Trump weathers the storm of this resistance from above and below, his foreign policy
could flounder on its own internal conflicts and inconsistencies. To take one example: his
policy of collaboration with Russia in Syria could flounder on his simultaneous commitment to
scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. Why? Because Iran is a Russian ally in the region. Most
disturbingly, if the Trump administration goes into a deeper crisis, it will double down on its
bigoted scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims to deflect attention from its failures.
Economic nationalism beyond Trump?
While Trump's contradictions could stymie his ability to impose his economic nationalist
program, that program is not going to disappear any more than the problems it is intended to
address. The reality is that the United States faces continued decline in the neoliberal world
order. China, even taking into account the many contradictions it faces, continues to benefit
from the current setup.
That's why, in an ironic twist of historic proportions, Chinese premier Xi Jing Ping
defended the Washington Consensus in his country's first address at the World Economic Forum in
Davos Switzerland. He even went so far as to promise to come to the rescue of free-trade
globalization if the Trump administration abandoned it. "No one will emerge as a
winner in a trade war ," he declared. "Pursuing protectionism is just like locking one's
self in a dark room. Wind and rain may be kept outside, but so are light and air."
29
One of his underlings, Zhang Jun, remarked, "If anyone were to say China is playing a
leadership role in the world I would say it's not China rushing to the front but rather the
front runners have stepped back leaving the place to China. If China is required to play that
leadership role then China will assume its responsibilities." 30
China is accelerating the transformation of its economy. It seeks to push out multinationals
that have used it as an export-processing platform and replace them with its own state-owned
and private corporations, which, like Germany, will export its surplus manufactured goods to
the rest of the world market. 31 No wonder, then, that a survey conducted by the
American Chamber of Commerce found that 80 percent of American multinationals consider China
inhospitable for business.32
China is also aggressively trying to supplant the United States as the economic hegemon in
Asia. Immediately after Trump nixed the TPP, China appealed to states in the Asia Pacific
region to sign on to its alternative trade treaty, the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP). China is determined to challenge American imperial rule of the Asia
Pacific. Though its navy is far smaller than Washington's, it plans to accelerate efforts to
build up its regional naval power against Trump's threats to block Chinese access to the
strategic islands in the South China Sea.
All of this was underway before Trump. That's why Obama was already inching toward some of
Trump's policies. He initiated the pivot to Asia, deployed the US Navy to the region, and
imposed tariffs on Chinese steel and tires. He also complained about NATO countries and others
freeloading on American military largesse. He thus encouraged Japan's rearmament and
deployments of its forces abroad. He also began the move to on-shoring manufacturing based on a
low-wage America with cheap energy and revitalized infrastructure.
So it's imaginable that another figure could take up and repackage Trump's economic
nationalism. Regardless of whether this happens or not, it is clear that there is a trajectory
deep in the dynamics of the world system toward interimperial rivalry between the United States
and its main imperialist challenger, China. Obviously there are countervailing forces that
mitigate the tendency toward military conflict between them. The high degree of economic
integration makes the ruling classes hesitant to risk war. And, because all the major states
are nuclear powers, each is reluctant to risk armed conflicts turning into mutual
annihilation.
For background on this key institution of American imperialism see Laurence H. Shoup and
William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States
Foreign Policy (New York: Authors Choice Press, 2004), and Laurence H. Shoup, Wall
Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal
Geopolitics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015).
Gideon Rose, "Out of Order," Foreign Affairs (January–February,
2017).
Richard Haass, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old
Order (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).
For one of the best accounts of neoliberalism as a response to globalization and a
strategy to overcome the crisis of the 1970s, see Neil Davidson, "The Neoliberal Era in
Britain: Historical Developments and Current Perspectives," International Socialism
Journal , no. 139 (2013),
http://isj.org.uk/the-neoliberal-era-in-... .
Lecture at Trinity College, Dublin, Oct. 12, 1999, cited by Sam Gindin in "Social Justice
and Globalization: Are They Compatible?" Monthly Review , June 2002, 11.
For an account of the neoliberal boom and consequent crisis and slump, see David McNally,
Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (Oakland, CA: PM
Press, 2010).
For a summary of the classical theory of imperialism, see Phil Gasper, "Lenin and
Bukharin on Imperialism," International Socialist Review , no. 100 (May 2009),
http://isreview.org/issue/100/lenin-and-...
.
For a summary and critique of Hardt and Negri's ideas see Tom Lewis, "Empire strikes
out," International Socialist Review , no. 24 (July–August 2002), www.isreview.org/issues/24/empire_strike...
.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2000),
xiii–xiv.
See, for example, William Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class,
and the State in a Transitional World (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins, 2004).
See Ashley Smith, "Global empire or imperialism?" International Socialist Review
, no 92 (Spring 2014), http://isreview.org/issue/92 .
Justin Yifu Lin, "China and the Global Economy," Remarks at the Conference "Asia's Role
in the Post-Crisis Global Economy," November 29, 2011,
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/s... .
Ed Pilkington and Martin Pengelly, "'Let it Be an Arms Race': Donald Trump Appears to
Double Down on Nuclear Expansion," The Guardian , December 24, 2016, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/23/...
.
Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bannon Vows Daily Fight for the "Deconstruction of the
Administrative State," Washington Post , February 23, 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh-s... .
Julie Hirschfeld Davis, "Rumblings of a 'Deep State' Undermining Trump? It Was Once a
Foreign Concept," New York Times , March 6, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/po... .
Stephen Fidler, Te-Ping Chen, and Lingling Wei, "China's Xi Jingping Seizes Role as
Leader of Globalization," Wall Street Journal , January 17, 2017, www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-d...
.
For further discussion of this point, see Ashley Smith, "Anti-imperialism and the Syrian
Revolution," Socialist Worker , August 25, 2016, https://socialistworker.org/2016/08/25/a...
.
"... Through neoliberal rationales, they are able to reach many of their social objectives even if they fall short of their policy goals ..."
"... The belief that Trump would alter American conservativism away from neoliberal economics is not without its basis. ..."
"... The marriage between neoliberalism and Christian nationalism that neo-conservatives pursued during the George W. Bush era was going to experience a soft separation under Trump. The pursuit of neoliberalism policies would be relegated in importance, if not abandoned completely, and there would be doubling down on Christian nationalism, with a tripling down on the nationalist element. Unsurprisingly, the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reveals that Trump is ready to renege on his end of this bargain with the hope that poor whites will still be willing to keep up their end. ..."
"... The argument that Trump would somehow overturn America's neoliberal economic order myopically focused on Trump's trade policy. In doing so, it both misunderstood what Trump represented and the ideological framework of neoliberalism. Trump's fever pitch agonizing over the United States' trade deficit with China and Mexico are both the wallowing of an economic idiot and the maneuvering of a political savant. ..."
"... The insinuation was for average Americans to take back what was rightfully theirs by engaging in a new round of economic bargaining with these two nations, if not an open trade war. ..."
"... As the latest tax bill has shown, Trump is dedicated to weakening the ability of the government to extract wealth from the rich. This supreme goal takes priority over the Republican gospel of balance budgets. ..."
"... The Right Nation: Conservative Power in ..."
"... The United States now has an Americanized version of European style far Right politics, and its xenophobic ambitious has come about through a constant assertion of neoliberal values. ..."
"... Understood in proper terms, "economic nationalism" is best described as "market statism" -- where, in Milton Friedman's words, the purpose of the state should be "to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets" but nothing else. ..."
The passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has refuted any notion that
Trump's ascension to the White House would mark an end to neoliberalism. Poor whites who
supported Trump expected him to offer America a new version of conservativism that would break
with neoliberalism. Instead, furthering neoliberal policies has become a critical objective
that works in tandem with Trump's xenophobic rhetoric
With the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, President Trump secured his first major
policy victory. Despite their federal dominance, the Republican Party has proven to be
legislatively constipated. Below the surface of party unity, sectarian differences between the
competing strains of American conservatism have hindered it from taking advantage of its
historical positioning. Nevertheless, tax cuts proved to be a workable common ground that Trump
was able to take advantage of. While commentary of the passage has tended to focus on this
Republican unity, the most significant aspect of the Act's passage is the refutation that
Donald Trump's ascension to the White House would somehow mark an end to the era of neoliberal
economics. Furthering neoliberal policies has not only been an aspect of Trump's agenda but a
critical goal that works in tandem with his xenophobic rhetoric. Far from being opposed by the
Bannon faction of Trump's coalition, neoliberalism has provided a comforting aerie for their
fascist inclinations to develop. Through neoliberal rationales, they are able to reach many
of their social objectives even if they fall short of their policy goals .
The belief that Trump would alter American conservativism away from neoliberal economics
is not without its basis. In a bizarre case of enveloping ironies, Trump's presidential
campaign was successful in portraying him as both a billionaire business wizard and as an
example of an American everyman. He advocated for "draining the swamp" of corrupt Wall Street
executives, while at the same time paraded his practice of tax evasion has an example of his
shrewd financial acumen. The incompatibility of these two personas is obvious, but it has a
certain appeal within the context of America's poor whites. Poor white Americans are both
spiteful toward and enamored by capitalism. They are spiteful because it retards their own
social mobility, but enamored with it because it provides a basis for their own privilege over
racial minorities. Unlike their counterparts among racial minorities, poor whites do not
consider themselves poor by class, but poor by temporary misfortune. They are not poor per se,
but rather down-on-their-luck millionaires whose are unjustly treated by liberal elites and
coddled minorities. For these people, Trump represented an enchanting example of uncouth
success. The fact that he was crass and despised only reinforced the notion that it is not
connections and education that made a person wealthy, but hard work and an intuition for
affluence. Culturally speaking, these are traits are considered innate to white Americans. Of
course, to believe this mythology, many of Trump's low-class acolytes were only willing to
support his campaign under the pretext of an unspoken bargain: they would ignore the reality
that his wealth was inherited and not earned, and he would refrain from the usual Republican
claptrap about the virtues of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. That way both partners
could remain comfortable in their delusions that all their current and potential future wealth
was a product of their own doing. The result of this unspoken bargain was that Trump was
supposed to offer America a new version of conservativism. The marriage between
neoliberalism and Christian nationalism that neo-conservatives pursued during the George W.
Bush era was going to experience a soft separation under Trump. The pursuit of neoliberalism
policies would be relegated in importance, if not abandoned completely, and there would be
doubling down on Christian nationalism, with a tripling down on the nationalist element.
Unsurprisingly, the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reveals that Trump is ready to renege
on his end of this bargain with the hope that poor whites will still be willing to keep up
their end.
Astute observers saw this betrayal coming. The argument that Trump would somehow
overturn America's neoliberal economic order myopically focused on Trump's trade policy. In
doing so, it both misunderstood what Trump represented and the ideological framework of
neoliberalism. Trump's fever pitch agonizing over the United States' trade deficit with China
and Mexico are both the wallowing of an economic idiot and the maneuvering of a political
savant. The issue was always economically inane. A trade deficit in-and-of-itself reveals
very little about the overall health of an economy. Whether a nation should strive for or
against a trade deficit is more dependent on that nation's strategic position within the global
economy, and not necessarily an indicator of the health of domestic markets. But, trade proved
to be a salient issue for symbolic purposes. Stagnation and automation have compelled American
middle and lower classes to accept an economic torpor. Making trade deficits a central campaign
tenant provided these people with an outlet for their class anxieties without having to
question the nature of class itself. Lethargic economic growth was blamed on Mexicans and the
Chinese. The insinuation was for average Americans to take back what was rightfully theirs
by engaging in a new round of economic bargaining with these two nations, if not an open trade
war.
While Trump's criticism of Mexico and China seemed to imply an undoing of international
market liberalization and a return to an age of greater protectionism, in reality, Trump very
rarely recommended such policies. Instead, he made vague references to "good people" who will
make "good deals" for American workers and openly preferred lowering America's corporate tax
rate in order to encourage businesses to reinvest in the United States. The first proposal was
always understood as meaningless. Its value was in showmanship. A person can hoodwink the world
into thinking that they are a genius just by referring to everyone around them as a moron.
However, the second proposal not only does not overturn the reigning neoliberal order, it
strengthens it. As the latest tax bill has shown, Trump is dedicated to weakening the
ability of the government to extract wealth from the rich. This supreme goal takes priority
over the Republican gospel of balance budgets. The deficit be damned if preventing it
smacks of any hint of expropriation of the wealthy. But, the deficit is not entirely damned. It
is an open secret that Republicans are salivating for a fiscal crisis that will provide them
with a pretext for cutting Social Security and Medicare. It was only a matter of time before
Trump's administration wholeheartedly joins them.
The fact that the real potential for cutting favored government programs has not resulted in
the same outcry among Trump's supporters, even among low-class demographics, as his suggestion
that he might soften his position on immigration is a grave concern. Social Security and
Medicare are extremely popular in the United States among poor and working people regardless of
ethnicity and political ideology. Nevertheless, tolerance for their obliteration has become
palatable to the majority of white Americans. In 2004, journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian
Wooldridge published their exhaustive history of the American Right, The Right Nation: Conservative Power
inAmerica . At the time, Michlethwait and Wooldridge could accurately claim
that "in no other country is the Right defined so much by values rather than class Yet despite
the importance of values, America has failed to produce a xenophobic 'far Right' on anything
like the same scale as Europe has." A little over a decade later, Michlethwait's and
Wooldridge's observation has become obsolete. Trump is inept at policy and governance, but he
is a skilled mobilizer and has managed to shift the American Right into a new direction.
The United States now has an Americanized version of European style far Right politics, and
its xenophobic ambitious has come about through a constant assertion of neoliberal
values.
Trump has not only furthered the neoliberal doctrine of privatization, but also that of the
economization of everyday life, and specifically, the economization of American racism. While
fear of cultural differences between "the west" and "the rest" has always been front and center
for the Bannon wing of Trump's coalition, more tactical voices find economic justifications for
their xenophobia: immigrants steal jobs, freeride on welfare benefits, and don't pay taxes. The
image that emerges when these talking points converge is a political system enamored with
quantifying and dispensing material goods between those who deserve and those who do not. For
most modern conservatives, opposition to immigration is not based on an open fear of
differences; rather, it is a feeling that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, are
unwilling to accept a free market economic system that treats all Americans on fair and equal
terms. Unlike average Americans, who work hard and thus deserve their market remunerations,
immigrants -- and by implication other minorities -- rely on a mixture of government handouts
and liberal acquiescence to the rules. Immigrants cash their welfare checks because liberal
elites look the other way on law enforcement. This worldview suggests that the government
should not only be redirected to strenuous law enforcement but also that it should not be in
the business of providing society with social welfare in the first place. Doing so only creates
an impetus for illegal immigration and lazy minorities. In this manner, Bannon's cheerleading
of "economic nationalism" was always a rhetorical mirage. Understood in proper terms,
"economic nationalism" is best described as "market statism" -- where, in Milton Friedman's
words, the purpose of the state should be "to preserve law and order, to enforce private
contracts, to foster competitive markets" but nothing else.
There is no fundamental difference in the terms of the realpolitik outcomes between
Friedman's neoliberalism and Bannon's economic nationalism, even if they begin from separate
economic philosophies. The only difference is in what should be considered preferable within
market configurations. In Capitalism and Freedom ,
Friedman emphasizes his personal objections to racist ideologies but sees no need for a
government to ensure racial equality. According to Friedman, racism is to be overcome through
individual argumentation, not political struggle; it is the changing of tastes within the
marketplace that will provide the liberation of ethnic minorities, not the paternal hand of the
government preventing discrimination. Friedman's de-politicizing of racial anxieties to mere
matters of "taste," provides an opening for those -- like Bannon -- who are eager to engage in
a culture war, but are well aware of the potentially alienating effects of actually taking up
arms. If racial discrimination is only a matter of "taste," similar to other desires within the
marketplace, then the maintenance of white supremacy is predicated on its profitability. As
long as whiteness can maintain its social hegemony, then Friedman's governmental obligations
"to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets," will
serve to reinforce it. The neoliberal economizing of American racism allows for many of the
effects of white supremacy without necessarily the adoption of any of its core premises.
Trump's coalition of white nationalists and free-market ideologues thus become comfortable
bedfellows, even while maintaining a rhetorical mistrust of each other.
The question is can Trump maintain his coalition of realigned conservatives in time for the
next election cycle? While his low polling numbers and recent Democratic Party successes are
encouraging, they are not foolproof. The destabilizing of the narrative on American racism can
only occur through a refusal to accept the economization of the debate. The exclusion of racial
minorities from social welfare and the utter bureaucratic madness of the United States'
immigration policies have a moral dimension that has to take precedence over concerns regarding
job stealing and tax burdens, no matter how fallacious such arguments are to begin with.
Expecting the Democratic Party's leadership to play a leading role in this de-economization of
the debate is not impossible, but unlikely. Along with Republicans, Democrats have been
complicit in the framing social issues in relations to the economy, and the economy as merely
working in the service of private interests. Only recently has the leftwing of the Democratic
Party been organized and energized enough to counter this influence and return the party to its
New Deal orientation. Whatever its limitations, Roosevelt's "freedom from want" provides a
moral framework for economic policy. It is a reasonable and familiar starting point to break
with a neoliberal credo that economizes all morality within a capitalist framework.
While the left-wing of the Democratic Party has seen tremendous progress, it is still far
from overturning the organization's centrist leadership. In many ways, the passage of the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act is a painful reminder of how weak the American Left is once Republicans are
able to stay united. Like with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
is extremely unpopular. The trickledown theory of economics that the act is based on is rightly
seen a convenient canard for the rich. So much so, that it has been reduced to a cliché
joke among late night talk show hosts. With the exception of Fox News, the mainstream press has
frequently commented on the nearly universal consensus among economists that the Act will
result in a massive transfer of wealth to the upper class. Intellectually, there is no place
for defenders of the Act to hide. However, unlike opposition to repealing the Affordable Care
Act, opposition to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been somewhat muted. While Americans still are
seething from the injustices of the 2007-2008 economic collapse, ten years on, they still have
not found a tangible political venue to express their frustrations. This means that regardless
of the outcome of the next election cycle the American Left is going to have to play a
persistent role creating a meaningful outlet for people's dismay, and fostering a political
discourse that recognizes that the Trump phenomenon is rooted in the neoliberal age that
preceded it. The dangerous tantrum-prone child of Trumpism will only be forced off the
playground when its neoliberal parents no longer own the park.
Yes he is a libral domestcally and nationalsit in forign policy -- that's why the term "national neoliberalism" looks appropriate
for definition of his policies
Notable quotes:
"... When one compares these 10 neoliberal commandments with Trump's policy agenda, it is clear that the president is far more neoliberal than his populist rhetoric would suggest. ..."
"... Trump is clearly and consistently positioning himself to cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulate big business and the financial industry, and pursue a wide range of privatization plans and public-private partnerships that will further weaken American unions. In short, he will govern like the neoliberals who came before him and against whom he campaigned so ardently. ..."
"... In fact, Trump's agenda aims to realize the foremost goals of neoliberalism: privatization, deregulation, tax-cutting, anti-unionism, and the strict enforcement of property rights. For example, in his address to Congress , Trump promised "a big, big cut" for American companies and boasted about his administration's "historic effort to massively reduce job-crushing regulations." Ironically, Trump then asserted that he will reduce regulations by "creating a deregulation task force inside of every government agency," itself a contradictory expansion of the administrative state he had just sworn to shrink. ..."
"... Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Trump was correct to criticize the Obama administration, whose economic team was for a time staffed by neoliberal Democrats like Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, for saving Wall Street after the financial collapse of 2008 while allowing Main Street to go under. Trump's victory is the direct result of the fact that American workers have not been well served by the country's policymaking elites. ..."
"... Yet the resistance that Trump's presidency has inspired across the country must also learn from the contradictions between his economic nationalism and neoliberalism. Those who reject his phony populism must be careful not to dismiss the concerns of Trump's voters, which has unfortunately been the response of too many who console themselves by deriding Trump's supporters as ignorant "deplorables" who deserve what they will get. ..."
"... The problem with the last paragraph is that it tries once again to put the election in purely economic terms. It wasn't. It was largely white cultural backlash. Much of his vote was driven by bans on immigration and a promise to maintain a white rural/suburban culture by bringing jobs back like coal mining or manufacturing jobs to Northwood Michigan. ..."
In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump promised to deliver on his populist campaign pledges to protect
Americans from globalization. "For too long," he bemoaned, "we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and
wealth to foreign countries." But now, he asserted, the time has come to "restart the engine of the American economy" and "bring
back millions of jobs." To achieve his goals, Trump proposed mixing massive tax-cuts and sweeping regulatory rollbacks with increased
spending on the military, infrastructure and border control.
This same messy mix of free market fundamentalism and hyper-nationalistic populism is presently taking shape in Trump's proposed
budget. But the apparent contradiction there isn't likely to slow down Trump's pro-market, pro-Wall Street, pro-wealth agenda. His
supporters may soon discover that his professions of care for those left behind by globalization are -- aside from some mostly symbolic
moves on trade -- empty.
Just look at what has already happened with the GOP's
proposed
replacement for Obamacare , which if enacted would bring increased pain and suffering to the anxious voters who put their trust
in Trump's populism in the first place. While these Americans might have thought their votes would win them protection from the instabilities
and austerities of market-led globalization, what they are getting is a neoliberal president in populist clothing.
Neoliberalism is a term most often used to critique market-fundamentalism rather than to define a particular policy agenda. Nonetheless,
it is most useful to understand neoliberalism's policy implications in terms of 10 norms that have defined its historical practice.
These norms begin with
trade liberalization and extend to
the encouragement of exports;
enticement of foreign investment;
reduction of inflation;
reduction of public spending;
privatization of public services;
deregulation of industry and finance;
reduction and flattening of taxes;
restriction of union organization;
and, finally, enforcement of property and land ownership.
Politicians don't necessarily have to profess faith in all of these norms to be considered neoliberal. Rather, they have to buy
into neoliberalism's general market-based logic and its attendant promise of opportunity.
When one compares these 10 neoliberal commandments with Trump's policy agenda, it is clear that the president is far more
neoliberal than his populist rhetoric would suggest. This conclusion will likely surprise his supporters, especially in light
of Trump's assaults on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Despite these attacks, however,
Trump is clearly and consistently positioning himself to cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulate big business and the financial
industry, and pursue a wide range of privatization plans and public-private partnerships that will further weaken American unions.
In short, he will govern like the neoliberals who came before him and against whom he campaigned so ardently.
In fact, Trump's agenda aims to realize the foremost goals of neoliberalism: privatization, deregulation, tax-cutting, anti-unionism,
and the strict enforcement of property rights. For example, in his
address
to Congress , Trump promised "a big, big cut" for American companies and boasted about his administration's "historic effort
to massively reduce job-crushing regulations." Ironically, Trump then asserted that he will reduce regulations by "creating a deregulation
task force inside of every government agency," itself a contradictory expansion of the administrative state he had just sworn to
shrink.
Since so much of Trump's agenda aligns with the long-standing ambitions of the Republican Party, it is likely that Trump will
be able to work with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to pass strictly neoliberal
legislation. Unlike his approach to trade, which congressional Republicans will probably scuttle, there is little reason to doubt
that we will see new legislation that privatizes public lands, overturns Dodd-Frank and other Wall Street regulations, cuts taxes
on business, makes organizing unions difficult, and allows big landowners to develop, mine, log, and shoot without restraint. For
all the animosity that may exist between the Trump administration and Republican congressmen, the two groups share a neoliberal vision
of the world.
From his new budget proposal we also know that Trump plans to continue the neoliberal assault on social service provisions --
such as the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act -- as well as public broadcasting, arts funding, scientific research and foreign
aid. As Trump vowed to Congress, he intends to implement a plan in which "Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use
of tax credits and expanded health savings accounts." Moreover, the money he does want to spend will be expended on military and
infrastructure projects that will almost certainly be organized around public-private partnerships that will fill the coffers of
Trump's business cronies.
What does Trump's neoliberal agenda mean for those whose discontent with globalization gave him the presidency? Nothing good.
The irony here is that the same neoliberalism that Trump plans to strengthen created the conditions that allowed him to enter the
White House. Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Trump was correct to criticize the Obama administration, whose economic team was
for a time staffed by neoliberal Democrats like Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, for saving Wall Street after the financial
collapse of 2008 while allowing Main Street to go under. Trump's victory is the direct result of the fact that American workers have
not been well served by the country's policymaking elites.
Yet the resistance that Trump's presidency has inspired across the country must also learn from the contradictions between
his economic nationalism and neoliberalism. Those who reject his phony populism must be careful not to dismiss the concerns of Trump's
voters, which has unfortunately been the response of too many who console themselves by deriding Trump's supporters as ignorant "deplorables"
who deserve what they will get. Going forward, all of those who want to resist the President's agenda must engage those left
behind by neoliberalism and provide them with an economic vision that addresses their very real concerns. After all, Trump's administration
will probably strengthen the forces that have hurt these citizens, and they will need representatives who are genuinely concerned
with their well-being if our political turmoil is to be put to rest.
Don't let his trade policy fool you: Trump is a neoliberal
(2/2) I think the truth is that many of these people are too far gone mentally and emotionally to ever come around to the "correct"
way of thinking (which is to say, they have been so brainwashed by reacting to facile nonsense like "liberty" and "freedom" that
they will believe anything as long as the argument is couched in those terms, despite the fact that when they vote they are indeed
consigning themselves and the rest of the country to a world without those very freedoms for anybody who's not supposedly "one
of them").
A great man once famously said "Conscience do cost." And boy, does it. Liberals need to get over their conscience once and
for all, and push back against conservatives the way conservatives have been for decades, but that can only happen if we are honest
about who we are arguing with, and call them out, boldly and proudly, on their intellectual failings.
(1/2) It's clear the authors don't expose themselves to right-wing news outlets. Far too much is made in liberal media about the
"deplorables" and how they feel suffocated by the economy (or more realistically, by the natural ebb and flow of capitalism),
but they belie the fact that so much of modern conservatism is more about being anti-liberal than it is about any sort of pro-conservative
ideology. The "deplorable" moniker has been adapted and co-opted by conservatives and is now worn proudly as a badge of honor
(in the same way "fake news" began as a liberal criticism of specific, deliberately-misleading media targeted towards the right,
but is now a term used almost exclusively by the right to blanket-describe literally any media that they disagree with). Any criticisms
of Trump are immediately met with criticisms of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Democrats in general. Bring up the KKK's support
of Trump 3 months ago? They'll bring up how the KKK was invented by Democrats 150 years ago.
The authors are too nice/professional to say it, but liberals need to stop handling conservatives with kid gloves and start
calling them what they are: rubes. Because it's not enough that they vote against their own self-interest and the interests of
the country, they take it one further and are actively gleeful in depriving liberals of anything liberals might value. Conversely,
most liberals I know and read online don't have an active hatred of conservatives, instead they have compassion and want to educate
them, and I suppose the thought is that if only enough of these articles get written, they'll eventually come around.
Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Trump was correct to criticize the Obama administration, whose economic team was for a
time staffed by neoliberal Democrats like Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, for saving Wall Street after the financial
collapse of 2008 while allowing Main Street to go under.
And here you have it. This is how Trump got elected. The Bernibots are the unwitting agent that gave us Trump. And they
are planing on doubling down
The problem with the last paragraph is that it tries once again to put the election in purely economic terms. It wasn't. It
was largely white cultural backlash. Much of his vote was driven by bans on immigration and a promise to maintain a white rural/suburban
culture by bringing jobs back like coal mining or manufacturing jobs to Northwood Michigan.
It is quite possible that Trump can win again in these areas despite implementing neoliberal policies. And it isn't that Democrats
don't have an economic message, they do. But it is one that includes and supports a much wider cultural base and one that many
of that WWC that voted for Trump don't want to hear.
I-Myslef 3/22/2017 1:37 PM EDT
NO. The Rust Belt was handed over to him by Bernie and non stop assault on Clinton and trade ...
THERESA May's new soft Brexit blueprint would "kill" any future trade deal with the United
States, Donald Trump warns today.
Mounting an extraordinary attack on the PM's exit negotiation, the President also reveals
she has ignored his advice on how to toughen up the troubled talks.
Instead he believes Mrs May has gone "the opposite way", and he thinks the results have been
"very unfortunate".
His fiercest criticism came over the centrepiece of the PM's new Brexit plan -- which was
unveiled in full yesterday.
It would stick to a common rulebook with Brussels on goods and agricultural produce in
a bid to keep customs borders open with the EU.
But Mr Trump told The Sun: "If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the
European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.
Special counsel Robert
Mueller is again asking for a delay in the sentencing of former national security adviser
Michael Flynn, according to court documents filed Friday.
The special counsel and attorneys for Flynn are asking for two more months before scheduling
his sentencing, requesting to file another status report by Aug. 24.
"Due to the status of the Special Counsel's investigation, the parties do not believe that
this matter is ready to be scheduled for a sentencing hearing at this time," states a joint
status report filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
This is the third time that prosecutors have asked to delay sentencing for Flynn, who
pleaded
guilty in December to lying to FBI agents investigating Russian interference in the 2016
election.
The trend is definitely against EU. But Britain may be crushed, like Brazil and Argentina into accepting neoliberal world order
for longer.
Notable quotes:
"... Maybe Johnson the Brexiter can now launch an inner party coup and push Theresa May out. According to a YouGov poll she lost significant support within her conservative party. Besides the Brexit row she botched a snap election, lost her party's majority in parliament and seems to have no clear concept for anything. It would not be a loss for mankind to see her go. ..."
"... Boris the clown, who wins within his party on 'likability' and 'shares my political outlook', would then run the UK. A quite amusing thought. Johnson is a man of no principles. While he is currently pretending to hold a pro-Brexit position he would probably run the same plan that May seems to execute: Delay as long as possible, then panic the people into a re-vote, then stay within the EU. ..."
"... There is an excellent piece in the Boston Review on the EU- https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/j-w-mason-market-police ..."
"... Iy makes the point that "The European Union offers the fullest realization of the neoliberal political vision. Its incomplete integration -- with its confusing mix of powers -- is precisely the goal." ..."
"... It traces the neo-liberal project, designed to prevent democracy from controlling economic policy, back to von Mises and Hayek. Nothing is more mistaken for critics of imperialism than to buy the line that the EU represents internationalism in any sense. The fact that some racists oppose the EU-just as others support it as a 'white" bastion -- is no reason to give an institution which is profoundly and purposefully undemocratic the benefit of the doubt. ..."
"... It is a wondrous sight to see Western [neo]Liberal Democracy crumbling before our eyes. Have a look at the very founders and protectors of "freedom" corrupt to the very marrow of their bones. ..."
"... Anything bad that can happen to the UK is well-deserved. The home, the womb of Russophobia, lies and illegal wars, as well as the hub of spying against American citizens, is exposed as thoroughly bankrupt politically. ..."
"... EU is bound to collapse but Britain might be tempted to wait it out, and maybe it is the game in London: not to be the first. The most dynamic destructive work in progress is the Euro that benefit to none of its 18 members (the euro-zones) but Geramny and Nederland. Italy has understood it but is using the refugees crisis to enlarge the contestation to non-euro zone countries (Visegrad group and more). ..."
"... As Nato is the real and only cement in this enlarged un-united Europe, in an epoch of accelerating change (collapse maybe) the famous Wait and see of the Brits has just muted in a slow fox-trot. ..."
"... But the puffed up Brits do not even see this danger and would blithely fall into the arms of the mafiosi from across the pond. ..."
"... Brexit is rebellion against the US imposed world order. London money has gone along and profited from the US imposed order, but the ordinary Brits may not have. They may not know where they are going, but they do know where they do not want to be. ..."
"... ditto... status of colony... isn't that what the globalists, corporations, neo liberals and etc want? get rid of any national identity as it gets in the way of corporations having the freedom to rape and pillage as needed.. ..."
"... Trump has reversed some 70 years of US strategy to gain nothing. It is quite remarkable. Strategic vandalism is a good description. ..."
"... The thing about UK and the EU is the UK is basically the US 51st state and the US is a defacto commonwealth nation. The colonization of Europe by the US was never meant to encompass the UK and the City. As they are basically one and the same. ..."
"... EU could not possibly have been a US/CIA idea as it actually works. Yes it is undemocratic, usurps national aspirations, perverts local economies, coddles oligarchs, and all that. But that does not mean it is a US idea. ..."
"... Single union political aspirations have been around for centuries and in many countries. Dare I suggest that it is actually based on the Soviet Union of peoples and most likely a Leninist or Trotskyist plot!! :)))) ..."
"... What do the City of London, the Vatican and Washington DC have in common? Actually, Jerusalem shares many of the same traits. Bonus points for the most creative euphemism for "usurious bank." ..."
"... From my perspective, Nation-States have not been the loci of power for some time (if they ever really were). The US, with its awesome military might and (former) industrial capabilities has served as the enforcement arm of that usurious supra-national cabal throughout "the American Century." ..."
"... Obtainimg strong mandate Cameron went to Brussels to supposedly negotiate better deal with EU ESPECIALLY for security while in fact he went there trying to bully the shape future EU integration especially in political realm and even more in realm of banking Union and integration and coordination of banking rules, laws and unified controlling authorities, via threatening Brexit which would be a deadly blow to EU propaganda glue that holds together this melting pot of divided as never before nations and never since medieval times united national elites integrated in EU ruling bureaucracy. ..."
"... First it was devastating impact of further EU integration on UK banking as London has become legal under U.K. law illegal in EU, money laundering capital of the world and criminal income is huge part of the revenue of the City , US is second. ..."
"... At the passage of Brexit I believed the purpose to be to allow the City of London (the bankers) unlimited financial freedom, perhaps especially in their entering into agreements with the Chinese. This could not be the case under the original EU rules. It will be interesting to see how this works out. ..."
"... The reality of the brexit which the Tory government is determined to raiload through has been designed by elites to better oppress the hoi polloi and to sell it to the masses it has been marketed as a means of restoring 'white power'. ..."
"... That is really saying something because the current version of the UK is one of the sickest, greed is good and devil take the hindmost societies I have ever experienced -- up there with contemporary israel and the US, 1980's South Africa and by the sound of it (didn't experience it firsthand like the other examples, all down to not existing at the time) 1940's Germany. ..."
"... Brexit is nether the problem or the solution, it was just another distraction to keep the mass occupied, whilst they assist stripped the uk and a large part of the world! ..."
"... Every brexiteer I've asked why they voted for out, begins by saying "For once they had to listen to us" and that's usually followed by "there's too many people here" or "it's the E.Europeans". (My response to the europhiles is that you knew the EU was finished a dozen years ago, when all the Big Issue sellers turned into Romanian women.) UK cities are thick with destitute E.Europeans. ..."
...Hours before Boris Johnson quit his position, Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned from Prime Minister May's cabinet.
On July 6 the British government held a cabinet meeting at Chequers, the private seat of the prime minister. Following the meeting
it published
a paper (pdf) that took a weird position towards exiting the European Union. If it would be followed, Britain would practically
end up with staying in the EU, accepting nearly all its regulations and court decisions, but without any say over what the EU decides.
The paper was clearly written by the 'Remain' side. The two top Brexiters in May's cabinet felt cheated and resigned. More are likely
to follow.
The majority of the British people who voted to leave the EU must feel duped.
My hunch is that Prime Minister Theresa May was tasked with 'running out the clock' in negotiations with the EU. Then, shortly
before the March 2019 date of a 'hard Brexit' would arrive without any agreement with the EU, the powers that be would launch a panic
campaign to push the population into a new vote. That vote would end with a victory for the 'Remain' side. The UK would continue
to be a member of the European Union.
No matter how the Brexit vote will go, the powers that are will not allow Britain to exit the European Union.
Is that claim still justified?
Maybe Johnson the Brexiter can now launch an inner party coup and push Theresa May out. According to a YouGov poll she
lost significant
support within her conservative party. Besides the Brexit row she botched a snap election, lost her party's majority in parliament
and seems to have no clear concept for anything. It would not be a loss for mankind to see her go.
Boris the clown, who wins within his party on 'likability' and 'shares my political outlook', would then run the UK. A quite
amusing thought. Johnson is a man of no principles. While he is currently pretending to hold a pro-Brexit position he would probably
run the same plan that May seems to execute: Delay as long as possible, then panic the people into a re-vote, then stay within the
EU.
Then again - Boris may do the unexpected.
How do the British people feel about this?
Posted by b on July 9, 2018 at 11:43 AM |
Permalink
Did you notice how quickly th E U sided with the U K over Salisbury ? That was the deal.
Remain in EU and we're back you!
Then again could have been we'l create a false flag you back us and we'll stay , a suttle nuonce.
The likelihood is that the blairite faction in the Parliamentary Labour Party-which has no real political differences with the
Tories and is fanatically pro EU, as all neo-liberals are- will prop up the May government. Or a Tory government headed by another
Remainer, with Blairites in the Cabinet.
This will prevent the General Election which Tories of all parties fear.
Iy makes the point that "The European Union offers the fullest realization of the neoliberal political vision. Its incomplete
integration -- with its confusing mix of powers -- is precisely the goal."
It traces the neo-liberal project, designed to prevent democracy from controlling economic policy, back to von Mises and
Hayek. Nothing is more mistaken for critics of imperialism than to buy the line that the EU represents internationalism in any
sense. The fact that some racists oppose the EU-just as others support it as a 'white" bastion -- is no reason to give an institution
which is profoundly and purposefully undemocratic the benefit of the doubt.
@Jeff - #1 - You are correct. There will not be another referendum.
I would add that there is some chance, however small, that on March 29th the British government will tell the EU that they
just have no way to meet the requirements of Article 50 and would the EU please allow them to continue as a member of the EU and
forget about all the shenanigans of the past 2 years. The EU has said previously that they will accept such a result and allow
the UK to continue as a member. The Brexiteers will have a total meltdown, and May will most likely be thrown out of office, but
most businesses and many individuals will be quite happy for this whole thing to just go away.
It is a wondrous sight to see Western [neo]Liberal Democracy crumbling before our eyes. Have a look at the very founders
and protectors of "freedom" corrupt to the very marrow of their bones.
In the US Trump, in the UK the Torys the democracies are now openly imperial and openly corrupt. Rule of law - ask the Skripals.
Brexit, Russia, Skripals, Russia, junkies and poisons Russians - minority government - ministers resigning right and left deadlines
looming no solutions in sight.
Western civilization is based on the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment and all its ideas of "democracy" are failing. Democracy
is not a religion, it is not the end of history, it is not sacred and immutable - checks and balances have failed utterly. This
sweetly written little essay says it all.
Look for countries to unilaterally bail from the EU with little or no advance notice. They will simply abrogate and that will
trigger an avalanche of others joining in. There are various good economic reasons why they would do that, but I think the groundswell
of populism fueled by anger over the open borders cataclysm will be the prime driver.
Anything bad that can happen to the UK is well-deserved. The home, the womb of Russophobia, lies and illegal wars, as well
as the hub of spying against American citizens, is exposed as thoroughly bankrupt politically.
The current path to chaos
is well-trod. Now, we can expect national attention is on the team in Russia in the semi-finals, while the government crumbles
and tumbles. But afterward, especially if Kane fails to bring the Cup home? Oh, the chaos. Of course, it will all be Putin and
Russia's fault.
UK. Despicable. How long it has taken for folks to realize Theresa May always has been a stalking horse. Highly Likely the
UK will stew in its own piss. Put that in their White Hall dossiers, and stamp it "Kremlin Plot".
Britain won't be staying in the EU and nor will the EU be accepting May's fantasy ideas for a future relationship giving the UK
free trade on everything it needs. There's a remote possibility that a new UK government could begin working on re-joining the
EU (Article 49), but there are plenty in Europe who would not let the UK re-join, at least not in the near future.
Friday the
13th is coming soon, scary stuff ?
The "Don't take No for an answer" is rather misleading. Made to vote again ..only after changes to the Treaty. France's vote
against the EU Constitution was accepted and when the Dutch also rejected it, it didn't happen.
EU is bound to collapse but Britain might be tempted to wait it out, and maybe it is the game in London: not to be the first.
The most dynamic destructive work in progress is the Euro that benefit to none of its 18 members (the euro-zones) but Geramny
and Nederland. Italy has understood it but is using the refugees crisis to enlarge the contestation to non-euro zone countries
(Visegrad group and more).
Now we have this Nato meeting coming and the abomination of Donald meeting Vlad that scares the whole neo-lberals, borgists,
russian haters, warmongers.
As Nato is the real and only cement in this enlarged un-united Europe, in an epoch of accelerating change (collapse maybe)
the famous Wait and see of the Brits has just muted in a slow fox-trot.
Brits, especially the Leave voters, have no real idea what the consequences of leaving the EU are, nor do they care that much.
What is uppermost in their minds is they do not want is to be in a union with "losers". Every single country on the Continent
is a loser and thus the object of contempt. The only country in Europe that is not a loser (meaning they have never lost a war)
is the United Kingdom of Roast Beef and God Save The Queen.
This British loser-phobia also explains the island nation's guttural hatred of Russia, which has bailed out Europe, and so
by definition the Brits as well, twice, thereby taking away some of the British luster. (OK the last time around they got a bit
of help from their old colonies, the Yanks, but its all the same. Yanks and Brits are the same stock.) As far as EU goes the Brits
can leave, no problem. Except that what the Continent would then be faced with was an American armed camp a few miles off shore,
not an appealing prospect to say the least. But the puffed up Brits do not even see this danger and would blithely fall into
the arms of the mafiosi from across the pond.
Boris Johnson's resignation letter. Well written.
Makes the same argument over the Checkers paper that I made above. If Johnson gets 48 back benchers on his side he could launch
a vote on no-confidence against May and possibly become PM. The Conservatives in Parliament seem quite upset over all of this.
Brexit is rebellion against the US imposed world order. London money has gone along and profited from the US imposed
order, but the ordinary Brits may not have. They may not know where they are going, but they do know where they do not want to
be.
@20 Not sure who qualifies as an 'ordinary Brit' these days. They come in all shapes and colours. I think the ones who moved to
Spain are fairly happy with the EU status quo.
Dominic Raab is the new UK Brexit point-man. The previous guy, Davies, just resigned. But Raab's appointment, I think, points
to what Brexit has been about all along -- namely, labour market reform beyond the rest of Europe, and to do this the UK must
be free of the European Human Rights council and other protections it provides for workers in the member states.
@23 psychohistorian... ditto... status of colony... isn't that what the globalists, corporations, neo liberals and etc want?
get rid of any national identity as it gets in the way of corporations having the freedom to rape and pillage as needed..
it was interesting reading near the end of bjs comments "Over the last few months they have shown how many friends this country
has around the world, as 28 governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination of the
Skripals." Guilty first - we will prove it later... maybe he really ought to consider rule from Brussels or where ever, if he
can't fathom the concept of innocent until proven guilty...
The French populace rejected the EU Constitution in 2005 during the Chirac years, and you are correct that after some changes
it was accepted under the Sarkozy government.But that happened because it was the Assembly (the parliament, i.e., the political
class) that voted on it, not the people. Can't have those deplorable citizens deciding important matters like that, now can we?
@51 pft... in so far as the cia work for the financial complex - yeah, probably.. how to create a currency - the eu - that no
one has any real control over, to compete with the us$ and yen... makes sense on that level..
Western civilization is based on the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment and all its ideas ...
When we discuss ALL ideas of the Enlightenment, we must remember this:
Wikipedia: "Enlightened absolutism is the theme of an essay by Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786, defending
this system of government.[1]
When the prominent French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire fell out of favor in France, he eagerly accepted Frederick's invitation
to live at his palace. He believed that an enlightened monarchy was the only real way for society to advance.
Frederick the Great was an enthusiast of French ideas. Frederick explained: "My principal occupation is to combat ignorance
and prejudice ..."
In relatively short time, the List of enlightened despots included almost all absolute monarchs in Europe.
The awful truth for the Leave campaign is that the governing establishment of the entire Western world views Brexit as strategic
vandalism. Whether fair or not, Brexiteers must answer this reproach. A few such as Lord Owen grasp the scale of the problem.
Most seemed blithely unaware until Mr Obama blew into town last week.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has come out in support of Brexit, saying the UK would be "better
off" outside of the European Union and lamenting the consequences of migration in the continent.
The billionaire, who secured the backing of Republican voters on a staunchly anti-immigration platform, said that his support
for the UK leaving the EU was a personal belief and not a "recommendation".
"I think the migration has been a horrible thing for Europe," Trump told Fox News late on Thursday. "A lot of that was pushed
by the EU. I would say that they're better off without it, personally, but I'm not making that as a recommendation. Just my
feeling."
Donald Trump accuses Angela Merkel of making 'catastrophic mistake' on refugees. President-elect tells The Times and Bild that
EU has become 'a vehicle for Germany'.
US President-elect Donald Trump said in a newspaper interview published on Sunday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had
made a "catastrophic mistake" with a policy that let a wave of more than one million migrants into her country.
In a joint interview with The Times and the German newspaper Bild, Trump also said the European Union had become "a vehicle
for Germany" and predicted that more EU member states would vote to leave the bloc as Britain did last June.
"I think she made one very catastrophic mistake, and that was taking all of these illegals," Trump said of Merkel, who in
August 2015 decided to keep Germany's borders open for refugees, mostly Muslims, fleeing war zones in the Middle East.
Trump has reversed some 70 years of US strategy to gain nothing. It is quite remarkable. Strategic vandalism is a good
description.
Even when the 'light' (read truth about Brexit) is revealed, many here choose to ignore it out of sheer ignorance. For a good
description of the MOA comment section, one should consult Plato's Allegory of the Cave. And the 'left' blames external elements
for its inaptitude and demise when many it has only itself to blame.
The thing about UK and the EU is the UK is basically the US 51st state and the US is a defacto commonwealth nation. The
colonization of Europe by the US was never meant to encompass the UK and the City. As they are basically one and the same.
Its presence in the EU was never really a problem though and was useful in terms of providing a guiding hand, so long as it remained
free of the Eurozone. So I am not really sure its a change in strategy. Just another fork in the road.
It remains to be seen how it all works out. Perhaps the UK Brexit is meant to send a message to the other EU states as to the
consequences of leaving. One benefit to the US neoliberals might be that UK scraps or at least scales back its NHS due to the
economic consequences of a hard Brexit. The 0.1% will be fine at the end of the day and they are the only group that matters .
The rest are just pawns on the board.
As for Germany. Immigration in the EU was all about divide and rule and leaving fewer Euros for social programs. All part of
the neoliberal blueprint. Divide and rule is an age old tactic perfected by the British to rule the colonies. The EU and Germany
being controlled by the Anglo-American ruling elite , and basically occipied by US controlled NATO opened the doors. Reversing
this immigration can provide a plausible reason for more terrorism in Europe to empower the EU to become more of a security-police
state like US and UK.
On a side note its interesting the head of the ECB and BOE are both former Goldman Sachs employees.
Another related link suggesting the EU also serves a purpose of isolating Russia economically.
EU could not possibly have been a US/CIA idea as it actually works. Yes it is undemocratic, usurps national aspirations,
perverts local economies, coddles oligarchs, and all that. But that does not mean it is a US idea.
Zero Hedge is polishing turds now it seems.
Single union political aspirations have been around for centuries and in many countries. Dare I suggest that it is actually
based on the Soviet Union of peoples and most likely a Leninist or Trotskyist plot!! :))))
"The Marshall Plan also established the creation of the Organization for European economic cooperation. It did this in a
number of ways:
promote co-operation between participating countries and their national production programmes for the reconstruction
of Europe,
develop intra-European trade by reducing tariffs and other barriers to the expansion of trade,
study the feasibility of creating a customs union or free trade area,
study multi-lateralisation of payments, and
Achieve conditions for better utilisation of labour.
It was arguably through this persistent interlinking of many European countries economic affairs that to not cooperate would
simply be too risky.
This provided the basis for European cooperation and this was favoured by many people because cooperation was seen as a
fundamental building block in the establishment of long term European Peace."
"In relatively short time, the List of enlightened despots included almost all absolute monarchs in Europe."
You are right, and that included Catherine the Great for whom Samuel Bentham worked for some years. His brother Jeremy spent
some time with him there and was a great admirer of Catherine and Potemkin. He was a key figure in the development of liberal
ideology and political economy.
'The Enlightenment' is an historical concept which obscures more than it explains. To suggest that representative democracy's
origins lie in this nebulous thing is completely misleading -- the truth is that democracy is as old as community. If anything
'The Enlightenment' movements are the beginning of the current system whereby the trappings of popular government are hung on
the reality of a kleptocrats' oligarchy.
Just in time for Emperor Trump's arrival in Britain! I do not understand Great Britain's "democracy," (the very concept
of an aristocratic House of Lords Peerage makes my head explode... and what's this about the Monarch having the authority to appoint
a Prime Minister if he/she doesn't like the one selected?). But doesn't the party with the majority get to anoint the Prime Minister?
Wouldn't that be Labour right now if Missy May is shown the door?
Furthermore, the assertion that the UK will stay in the EU is entirely plausible. I heard, early in the days after the vote, that
the govt had not expected it to go the way it did. Plans were made for a show of Brexit but that 'the idea is that everything
stays the same' , i.e., no change. Sadly for the UK, the EU will not allow that to happen. In all probability, another vote
will indeed be called. Otherwise, it's going to be a disaster for an already divided UK for many, many years to come!
The main problem with Brexit is that it is so complex that neither the officials who were set the task of drafting it knew
little more than the Ministers themselves! NOBODY knew what the fuck to do! And they still don't!
There is every chance a Vote of No Confidence is going to be called on May's government and she will finally fall, as she must
as she is the most inept PM there has probably ever been!
What do the City of London, the Vatican and Washington DC have in common? Actually, Jerusalem shares many of the same traits.
Bonus points for the most creative euphemism for "usurious bank."
Are terms such as "The Five Eyes" and "The AZ Empire"
'trumped' by all this nationalistic furor?
From my perspective, Nation-States have not been the loci of power for some time (if they ever really were). The US, with
its awesome military might and (former) industrial capabilities has served as the enforcement arm of that usurious supra-national
cabal throughout "the American Century."
But really, does anyone here really believe that a New York City conman or the latest British "mophead" is more powerful than
the dynastic power of the Rothschilds, Warburgs or Morgans... or even the nouveau riche like the Rockefellers or Carnegies?
These are dynasties so wealthy and powerful that they don't even appear on Forbes lists of "The Richest" and no one dare mention
their names when plotting the next global conflagration.
Since David Cameron used Jimmy Cliff's " You Can Get It
If You Really Want " for his campaign,
Afshin Rattansi's interview
with that truly revolutionary artist is not so off topic. And it's well worth 12 minutes to enter a worldview we Westerners rarely
live.
I and I say "Ja Mon!"
OK. I can't post Jimmy without " The Harder They Come,
" especially as that seems to be the root of most of the comments here.
@33 -- "...and Western Australia were separate British colonies that all began as penal settlement."
Not entirely correct. Western Australia started as a capitalist investment venture (c. 1828) but suffered chronic labor shortages
as slavery was closed down (c. 1833). The colony then resorted to convict imports for a time. Much of the myth about 'criminal'
can be re-framed as political prisoners such as the Welsh Chartists (see Chartism in Wales).
One can only be confused if one ignores public and secret reasons while Cameron threatened Brexit vote already in 2015 and went
through it in 2016. Officially it was about antiterrorism, security and hence controlling immigration flagship of Tory political
campaign that brought them overwhelming electoral win as well as some noises that EU rules and laws stifle economic development
and the British lose more in EU payments than they gain.
Obtainimg strong mandate Cameron went to Brussels to supposedly
negotiate better deal with EU ESPECIALLY for security while in fact he went there trying to bully the shape future EU integration
especially in political realm and even more in realm of banking Union and integration and coordination of banking rules, laws
and unified controlling authorities, via threatening Brexit which would be a deadly blow to EU propaganda glue that holds together
this melting pot of divided as never before nations and never since medieval times united national elites integrated in EU ruling
bureaucracy.
What Cameron was scared of as far as direction of future of EU?
First it was devastating impact of further EU integration on UK banking as London has become legal under U.K. law illegal
in EU, money laundering capital of the world and criminal income is huge part of the revenue of the City , US is second.
And second point is future of British monarchy which further integration of EU into superstate would require to be abandoned
in UK as elsewhere as states were to loose all even symbolic sovereignty and turn into regions and provinces as in Roman Empire
. Needles to say that UK still powerful landed aristocracy want nothing of that sort.
Hence Cameron went to Brussels make special deal for UK and was essentially, with some meaningless cosmetic changes, rebuked
into binary decision in EU or out of it no special deal and hence he escalated with calling Brexit vote as a negotiating tool
only to increase political pressure to rig elections toward remain if deal reached . In fact as latest scandal revealed results
of exit polls were released to stock market betting hedge funds just minutes before polls were closed concluding guess what, that
remain campaign won while electoral data in hours showed Brexiters wining simply because to the last moment before closing polls
they expected EU to cave in, they did not so they continued pressure by closing openly pro Brexit win.
The pressure continues now while Cameron had to pay political price as he openly advocated staying in EU under phony deal even
Tory did not buy, and hence this seeming chaos now fooling people that there is other way but hard Brexit to keep monarchy sovereignty
and profits from global money laundering or surrender and humiliation degradation U.K. into EU colony as BJ just said.
Of course which way it goes ordinary Brits will pay but also big crack will widen in EU as national movements will have impact
of shattering dreams of quit ascending to EU superstate.
At the passage of Brexit I believed the purpose to be to allow the City of London (the bankers) unlimited financial freedom,
perhaps especially in their entering into agreements with the Chinese. This could not be the case under the original EU rules.
It will be interesting to see how this works out.
The Chinese, as they are intended to be the regional governor of Asia under the evolving global governance are key to the entire
tyrannical plan. The AGW hoax, paid for by Western oligarchs, is the public relations for the UN's Agenda 21, currently being
enforced at the local level in many parts of the US.
The Chinese oligarchs are so delighted with its tyrannical land-use provisions that they are actually calling their projects
"China's Agenda 21". You may search for it.
@ 62: Thanks for the Pilger article, a good read. There are many today, who would return us all to those days.
Herman J Kweeblefezer , Jul 10, 2018 1:05:09 AM |
72
The reality of the brexit which the Tory government is determined to raiload through has been designed by elites to better
oppress the hoi polloi and to sell it to the masses it has been marketed as a means of restoring 'white power'. Bevin
& co can whine on about the injustices of the eu for as long as their theoretical view of the world sustains them, but the brexit
which will be delivered is based on 'pragmatic realism' developed by a really nasty gang of avaricious lying c**tfaces and will
create a society far more unjust, divided and impoverished than the one that currently exists.
That is really saying something
because the current version of the UK is one of the sickest, greed is good and devil take the hindmost societies I have ever experienced
-- up there with contemporary israel and the US, 1980's South Africa and by the sound of it (didn't experience it firsthand like
the other examples, all down to not existing at the time) 1940's Germany.
Jezza was great in the house last night but he didn't
call for an immediate general election which would be pretty much SOP for any opposition facing as tattered a government (Seven
cabinet 'resignations') as bereft of ideas as the Maybot machine.
The reason he didn't - couldn't in fact, is that the UK left is as divided and dug into their positions as that tory bunch
of bastards. Far too many opposition politicians insist that a 'deal' on brexit comes first ahead of sorting out poverty and homelessness,
woeful education outcomes (unless you believe wildly juked stats) and the horror show that has been created by three decades of
relentless attacks on the health service.
We see it here from the brexiters so convinced of the rightness of their cause they ignore the institutionalised racism that
will certainly follow a tory brexit. Or the remoaners who also ignore the unsavory aspects of eu policy to try and render the
labour left impotent. Those latter types simply don't give a damn about anything which flows from this debate and division other
than killing momentum, they consider even losing the next 5 elections to tories an agreeable sacrifice for ridding the party of
Corbyn and co.
Corbyn has recognized the destructive divisiveness of Brexit and tries to ignore it because he holds with fixing the mess so
many people are in as being much more important than theoretical arguments which will change nothing for the better regardless
of impassioned exhortations by ninnies on both sides of the argument.
The thing which really pisses me off about the lefty brexiters, is that they behave as if it is a now or never situation, when
it is anything but. There is nothing to prevent a more united Labour Party who have got their mandate by actually delivering a
better life for people rather than irrelevant concepts, returning to sorting out the UK's position in the EU at a later date,
ideally at a time when the EU's intransigent support for corporate welfare has run bang smack into a leftist UK Labour government's
determination to restore public ownership of natural monopolies (rail, water, power, mail delivery etc).
The lefty brexiters claim the lefty remainers won't allow it, while the lefty remainers claim it is the lefty brexiters clogging
the works. In fact it is both gangs of selfish egotistical assholes.
NotBob @ 35.
The EU Constitution never happened. The Lisbon Treaty came along a couple of years later and this time round the Irish people
voted against it. It got amended and the Irish people accepted it. The French and Dutch (and every other EU) country chose not
to "ask the people" and left the decision to the peoples' chosen represtentatives.
The Irish Constitution has a bit in it making
it necessary to ask the people before any changes can be made to that Constitution, so every time the EU adds some bits to the
EU Treaty that require the Irish to change their own Constitution there's trouble, as those 3 million or so Irish people have
the power to scupper anything and everything for the other 500 million EU citizens. Holding a national referendum to make decisions
affecting the entire Union doesn't seem to be either fair or democratic. A single EU-wide referendum could be held when there's
a major change to the Treaties.
Political correctness is a social disease very similar to syphilis - it fucks with the brain. You really should take precautions
if socializing in those circles. Precautionary measures are available at all chemists and most public toilets.
I click on MoA now and see a pic of Boris the clown hanging from a rope. If the Brits were smart, they would connect that rope
to a weather balloon and allow Boris to ascend to the stratosphere and cruise the jet stream.
The EU is first and foremost a massive attack on democracy. At the same time it attempts to establish technocracy as the mode
of government of the future. But right only racists and overly idealistic assholes oppose the EU...
"Democracy" only being possible locally? Numbers I posted on another thread:
Members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation - population of 3 Billion+
EU Members - population of 500 million.
United States - population of 326 million
GDP of United States - 18.57 trillion USD
GDP of European Union - 17.1 trillion USD
GDP China, India, Russia combined (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) -
- close to 15 trillion
You think EU countries have got a competitive chance if on their own? Or - democracy in Switzerland enables them to decide
on their relations with the outside world? Like not being part of the "single market" - they are -including free movement of people
- yes you can live and work in Switzerland if you are a EU citizen.
But right only racists and overly idealistic assholes oppose the EU
Brexit is nether the problem or the solution, it was just another distraction to keep the mass occupied, whilst they assist
stripped the uk and a large part of the world! The people we are scared to mention are the true people killing and oppressing
us. I thank Daniel@66 for naming them ! Rothchild family ect ect I would add the Rothermere family and Murdoch ! Politics are
debated, but history is made on the streets. We need to regain our sense of moral outrage (where did that go ?) there are 70 million
displaced people in the world ! It could be. You or I next !
Peter AU 1 @ 83: I agree with ADKC and IMO. There were convicts transported to the Australian colonies whose crimes can be considered
political crimes. The Tolpuddle Martyrs who came to the Sydney colony in the 1830s are one example: they were transported for
the crime of demanding an extension of voting rights to all men, among other demands. Such convicts were a small minority though.
As for Germany. Immigration in the EU was all about divide and rule and leaving fewer Euros for social programs.
"The demonization of Muslim immigration to the EU ...." - fixed it for you.
The stuff about leaving fewer euros for social programmes is propaganda. Social programmes are designed to force people to
work - they are pegged below the minimum wage.
In the case of Germany costs for refugees were accounted to the 0.7 percent of GDP Germany is supposed to spend for development
aid by the UN, thereby effectively developing Germany instead.
Alan @ 88
I am in total agreement with you on your comment regarding Boris Johnson ! His childish buffoonery, is a commen system / tactic
of a psychopath . It hides a callous disregard for human life , wins gullible friends which the psychopath manipulates to exploit
there power and influence! They are very good at scheming there own self interested plan. But (and here's the crunch ) are totally
useless at for seeing the consequences of there actions . And no regard for the victim of there actions!!! Do we want that in
charge of the nuclear button ?
There is nothing wrong/inconsistent with the idea of an interconnected world of sovereign (independent) states. The idea that
a treaty or a trade agreement means that a state is no-longer independent is ridiculous. As ridiculous as believing that an individual
who purchases a pack of polo mints is no longer free because of the need of a local shop and a manufacturer.
You are basically pushing the idea that there should be no nation states, no borders and all trade free and therefore no need
for treaties. From this comes no regulation, a poisoned environment, uncontrolled and rapacious capitalism, no rights for people,
no benefits, no protection, just work til' you die and polished off sharpish if you are no longer productive.
I don't object to an EU as a grouping of independent states acting collectively. I do object to an EU that erodes and undermines
the nation state, that seeks to remove state leaders and interfere in state elections/policies. The EU that we have is the latter
and there is no practical way to reform it to the former.
@ B. You have too high an opinion of the competence of the main political figures in the UK Governing Party.
Boris Johnson has
never been a serious contender for PM. He's good at giving a rousing speech to the Party faithful but that's it. The blue rinses
enjoy the titillation of his infidelities but they don't want someone so amoral coming anywhere near their daughters, or representing
their principles.
You knew Theresa May had no judgment the first day of her premiership, when she made BoJo her Foreign Secretary. A selection
that could kindly be described as risible. He indicated no suitability for the role before his appointment nor has since. Quite
the opposite. It was at that decision you knew all was hopeless. Brexit was going to be hopeless. Everything she was going to
be involved in was hopeless.
And so it has proved.
The vox pop that I encounter ..... the Remainers are reconciled to Brexit and just want to get on with it. The Brexiteers are
sick to death with hearing about it but not seeing anything done. Everyone had made their minds up before the election in 2015.
The Referendum campaign was a few weeks of premium entertainment watching the most reviled political figures in the land trying
to tear each others' throats out.
Every brexiteer I've asked why they voted for out, begins by saying "For once they had to listen to us" and that's usually
followed by "there's too many people here" or "it's the E.Europeans". (My response to the europhiles is that you knew the EU was
finished a dozen years ago, when all the Big Issue sellers turned into Romanian women.) UK cities are thick with destitute E.Europeans.
There's a huge disconnect between Parliament (+ media) and the people. A further example of this is the official narrative
on the Salisbury poisonings. Ask people in the street and they say "yeah, it was Vlad with the doorknob" and then they crease
up laughing. The Govt has no credibility with its "only plausible explanation".
My prediction, since the day BoJo was appointed minister for the exterior, is that the situation is so catastrophic the EU
will have to lead us by the hand through the process of brexit. The EU's priority will be the stability of the Euro. They won't
want us beggared on their doorstep and as they export 15% of their stuff to us they'll want to keep on doing that. We'll have
to have what we're given and be grateful.
The political situation in the UK is so far beyond surreal that a man dragging a piano with a dead horse on it would appear
mundane.
- It doesn't matter who the prime minister is. The UK has already adopted A LOT OF EU regulations/laws and that will make it nearly
impossible to perform a "Hard Brexit". The UK still exports A LOT OF stuff to the Eurozone and then it simply has to follow EU
regulations, no matter what the opinion of the government is. In that regard, the current EU regulation simply provides a good
framework, even for the UK. No matter what one Mrs. May or Mr. Johnson.
- As time goes by the UK can change parts of the EU
regulations to what the UK thinks those regulations should be.
- And do I think that Mrs. May and her ministers have drawn that same conclusion.
The much anticipated resignation letter penned by the former UK Foreign Minister Boris
Johnson has been released, and in as expected, he does not mince his words in unleashing a
brutal attack on Thersa May, warning that "we have postponed crucial decisions -- including the
preparations for no deal, as I argued in my letter to you of last November -- with the result
that we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in
the EU system, but with no UK control over that system ."
He then adds that while "Brexit should be about opportunity and hope" and "a chance to do
things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of
the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy", he warns that the " dream is dying,
suffocated by needless self-doubt. "
He then compares May's proposal to a submission even before it has been received by the EU,
noting that "what is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how
we see the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer . It is as
though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them."
And his punchline: the UK is headed for the status of a colony:
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to
see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement
Explaining his decision to resing, he then says that "we must have collective
responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly
concluded that I must go."
It remains to be seen if his passionate defense of Brexit will stir enough MPs to indicate
they are willing to back a vote of no confidence, and overthrow Theresa May in what would be
effectively a coup, resulting in new elections and chaos for the Brexit process going
forward.
Meanwhile, as Bloomberg adds, the fact that Boris Johnson, or those around him, made sure
his resignation statement came out in time for the evening news - before it was formally issued
in the traditional way by May's office, hints at his continued interest in leading the
Conservative Party.
His full letter is below (highlights ours):
Dear Theresa,
It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an
unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of
their democracy.
They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate
the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to
pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.
Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things
differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the
UK as an open, outward-looking global economy.
That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.
We have postponed crucial decisions -- including the preparations for no deal, as I argued
in my letter to you of last November -- with the result that we appear to be heading for a
semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK
control over that system.
It now seems that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not
actually going to be able to make our own laws. Indeed we seem to have gone backwards since
the last Chequers meeting in February, when I described my frustrations, as Mayor of London,
in trying to protect cyclists from juggernauts. We had wanted to lower the cabin windows to
improve visibility; and even though such designs were already on the market, and even though
there had been a horrific spate of deaths, mainly of female cyclists, we were told that we
had to wait for the EU to legislate on the matter.
So at the previous Chequers session we thrashed out an elaborate procedure for divergence
from EU rules. But even that now seems to have been taken off the table, and there is in fact
no easy UK right of initiative. Yet if Brexit is to mean anything, it must surely give
Ministers and Parliament the chance to do things differently to protect the public. If a
country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists -- when that proposal is
supported at every level of UK Government -- then I don't see how that country can truly be
called independent.
Conversely, the British Government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU
directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the
ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law,
without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health -- and when we no
longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made.
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony -- and many will struggle to
see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.
It is also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods
(and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then
there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable
customs arrangement unlike any other in existence.
What is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how we see
the end state for the UK -- before the other side has made its counter-offer. It is as though
we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them. Indeed, I
was concerned, looking at Friday's document, that there might be further concessions on
immigration, or that we might end up effectively paying for access to the single market.
On Friday I acknowledged that my side of the argument were too few to prevail, and
congratulated you on at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward. As I said then,
the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is that I have practised the words over
the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.
We must have collective responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these
proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.
I am proud to have served as Foreign Secretary in your Government. As I step down, I would
like first to thank the patient officers of the Metropolitan Police who have looked after me
and my family, at times in demanding circumstances.
I am proud too of the extraordinary men and women of our diplomatic service. Over the last
few months they have shown how many friends this country has around the world, as 28
governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination
of the Skripals. They have organised a highly successful Commonwealth summit and secured
record international support for this Government's campaign for 12 years of quality education
for every girl, and much more besides. As I leave office, the FCO now has the largest and by
far the most effective diplomatic network of any country in Europe -- a continent which we
will never leave.
"Immigration" has become the dominant issue dividing Europe and the US, yet the most important matter which is driving millions
to emigrate is overlooked is wars.
In this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely (1) imperial
wars (2) multi-national corporate expansion (3) the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe (4) the weakness
of the trade union and solidarity movements.
We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to
the western powers forcing refugees to 'follow' the flows of profits.
Imperial Wars and Mass Immigration
The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood,
housing and communities and undermining there security.
As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight. Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries
would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.
Others who fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East or Latin America were persecuted, or resided in countries too poor
to offer them employment or opportunities for a livelihood.
Some Afghans fled to Pakistan or the Middle East but discovered that these regions were also subject to armed attacks from the
West.
Iraqis were devastated by the western sanctions, invasion and occupation and fled to Europe and to a lesser degree the US , the
Gulf states and Iran.
Libya prior to the US-EU invasion was a 'receiver' country accepting and employing millions of Africans, providing them with citizenship
and a decent livelihood. After the US-EU air and sea attack and arming and financing of terrorist gangs, hundreds of thousands of
Sub-Sahara immigrants were forced to flee to Europe. Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea to the west via Italy, Spain, and headed
toward the affluent European countries which had savaged their lives in Libya.
The US-EU financed and armed client terrorist armies which assault the Syrian government and forced millions of Syrians to flee
across the border to Lebanon,Turkey and beyond to Europe, causing the so-called 'immigration crises' and the rise of rightwing anti-immigrant
parties. This led to divisions within the established social democratic and conservative parties,as sectors of the working class
turned anti-immigrant.
Europe is reaping the consequences of its alliance with US militarized imperialism whereby the US uproots millions of people and
the EU spends billions of euros to cover the cost of immigrants fleeing the western wars.
Most of the immigrants' welfare payments fall far short of the losses incurred in their homeland. Their jobs homes, schools, and
civic associations in the EU and US are far less valuable and accommodating then what they possessed in their original communities.
Economic Imperialism and Immigration: Latin America
US wars, military intervention and economic exploitation has forced millions of Latin Americans to immigrate to the US.. Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras engaged in popular struggle for socio-economic justice and political democracy between 1960 –
2000. On the verge of victory over the landed oligarchs and multinational corporations, Washington blocked popular insurgents by
spending billions of dollars, arming, training, advising the military and paramilitary forces. Land reform was aborted; trade unionists
were forced into exile and thousands of peasants fled the marauding terror campaigns.
The US-backed oligarchic regimes forced millions of displaced and uprooted pr unemployed and landless workers to flee to the US.
US supported coups and dictators resulted in 50,000 in Nicaragua, 80,000 in El Salvador and 200,000 in Guatemala. President Obama
and Hillary Clinton supported a military coup in Honduras which overthrew Liberal President Zelaya -- which led to the killing and
wounding of thousands of peasant activists and human rights workers, and the return of death squads, resulting in a new wave of immigrants
to the US.
The US promoted free trade agreement (NAFTA) drove hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and into low wage
maquiladoras; others were recruited by drug cartels; but the largest group was forced to immigrate across the Rio Grande. The US
'Plan Colombia' launched by President Clinton established seven US military bases in Colombia and provided 1 billion dollars in military
aid between 2001 – 2010. Plan Colombia doubled the size of the military.
The US backed President Alvaro Uribe, resulting in the assassination of over 200,000 peasants, trade union activists and human
rights workers by Uribe directed narco-death squad.Over two million farmers fled the countryside and immigrated to the cities or
across the border.
US business secured hundreds of thousands of Latin American low wages, agricultural and factory workers almost all without health
insurance or benefits – though they paid taxes.
Immigration doubled profits, undermined collective bargains and lowered US wages. Unscrupulous US 'entrepreneurs' recruited immigrants
into drugs, prostitution, the arms trade and money laundering.
Politicians exploited the immigration issue for political gain – blaming the immigrants for the decline of working class living
standards distracting attention from the real source : wars, invasions, death squads and economic pillage.
Conclusion
Having destroyed the lives of working people overseas and overthrown progressive leaders like Libyan President Gadhafi and Honduran
President Zelaya, millions were forced to become immigrants.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, Mexico witnessed the flight of millions of immigrants -- all victims of US and EU wars. Washington
and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct.
The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and violations of international
law.
To restrain immigration the first step is to end imperial wars, withdraw troops,and to cease financing paramilitary and client
terrorists.
ORDER IT NOW
Secondly, the West should establish a long term multi-billion-dollar fund for reconstruction and recovery of the economies, markets
and infrastructure they bombed The demise of the peace movement allowed the US and EU to launch and prolong serial wars which led
to massive immigration – the so-called refugee crises and the flight to Europe. There is a direct connection between the conversion
of the liberal and social democrats to war -parties and the forced flight of immigrants to the EU.
The decline of the trade unions and worse, their loss of militancy has led to the loss of solidarity with people living in the
midst of imperial wars. Many workers in the imperialist countries have directed their ire to those 'below' – the immigrants – rather
than to the imperialists who directed the wars which created the immigration problem. Immigration, war , the demise of the peace
and workers movements, and left parties has led to the rise of the militarists, and neo-liberals who have taken power throughout
the West. Their anti-immigrant politics, however, has provoked new contradictions within regimes,between business elites and among
popular movements in the EU and the US. The elite and popular struggles can go in at least two directions – toward fascism or radical
social democracy.
Teh author stated: "The story of the Trump collusion plot started with an intelligence
fabrication scheme hatched by US and British Government officials and their agents, including
journalists in Washington, New York and London. This started with the Golden Showers
dossier ; the sequel can be followed here . "
Over weeks and months of last year, Adam Waldman (lead image, left), a Washington lobbyist
with ties to the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, tried to lure Julian Assange (second
from left) into making incriminating admissions to benefit the Democrats' campaign alleging
Russian collusion in Clinton's defeat by President Donald Trump. Assange tried to use Waldman
for a deal with the US Department of Justice, exchanging an offer to withhold disclosure of
classified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents and trade other secrets, some Russian,
in exchange for a grant of immunity from US prosecution.
At the same time, Oleg Deripaska (third from left), the oligarch in control of the Russian
aluminium industry, paid Waldman to offer US prosecutors information about the Trump election
campaign manager Paul Manafort and others connected to the Trump campaign, including Russians,
in exchange for a US Government promise not to impose sanctions on Deripaska. Last week Luke
Harding (right), a reporter for the Guardian, a London newspaper, sold the story of Waldman's
meetings with Assange and Deripaska as a conspiracy to advance a scheme by President Vladimir
Putin to control the US Government.
Four plotters; more than four schemes; money in Waldman's and Harding's pockets; not a shred
of truth.
The story of the Trump collusion plot started with an intelligence fabrication scheme
hatched by US and British Government officials and their agents, including journalists in
Washington, New York and London. This started with the Golden Showers
dossier ; the sequel can be followed here .
The story of Deripaska's engagement of Waldman as his lobbyist with Hillary Clinton at the
State Department and other officials in the Obama Administration has been running for nine
years. Deripaska's payments to Waldman have averaged half a million dollars a year; that's a
total to date of about $5 million. The failure of every one of Waldman's operations on
Deripaska's behalf can be read at this click .
A semi-annual report of Waldman's lobbying activities for Deripaska is required to be
disclosed by the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA); the record is accessible at the
FARA unit of the Justice
Department in Washington. For example, details of which US officials Waldman met and what he
wanted them to do for Deripaska were accessible in the FARA filings for 2011
here .
Since then the filings can be followed at six-monthly intervals through December 15, 2017.
In last December's filing Waldman claimed to the Justice Department that, among the purposes of
Deripaska's engagement, he was being paid for selecting animal welfare charities and promotion
of a Russian vaccine for ebola.
Waldman claims on his company website that "Endeavor acts as a core member of its Client's
[Deripaska] holding company executive team, and is the sole representative of its Client's
myriad interests before the U.S. government." Today the FARA dossier on Waldman's Russian
clients shows this:
Source:
https://efile.fara.gov/ When Waldman registered himself as lobbying for the Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov, he was doing Deripaska's bidding; Lavrov usually
does .
This means that Waldman's registration as Deripaska's agent in Washington remains active and
he continues to be paid, even though the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control
ordered all US individuals and institutions to cease doing business with Deripaska and his
companies from April 6.
The US Treasury did not sanction Deripaska for supporting animal welfare and an ebola
vaccine. The reasons for Deripaska's sanction, according to the Treasury, were that "having
acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, a senior official of the
Government of the Russian Federation, as well as pursuant to E.O. 13662 for operating in the
energy sector of the Russian Federation economy. Deripaska has said that he does not separate
himself from the Russian state. He has also acknowledged possessing a Russian diplomatic
passport, and claims to have represented the Russian government in other countries. Deripaska
has been investigated for money laundering, and has been accused of threatening the lives of
business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and
racketeering. There are also allegations that Deripaska bribed a government official, ordered
the murder of a businessman, and had links to a Russian organized crime group." For more on the
US action against Deripaska, read
this .
Waldman has sidestepped the ban on taking money from Deripaska by changing his registration
from Endeavor Group -- a lobbying company covered by the OFAC sanction – to "Endeavor Law
Firm PC". That's a one-man company whose only employee is Waldman; it isn't mentioned by the
Endeavor Group's website. As a law firm acting for Deripaska, Waldman isn't banned by the new
sanction.
In February of this year the Murdoch media reported that on Deripaska's instructions,
Waldman was attempting to arrange appearances before the US Senate Intelligence Committee for
Deripaska and for Christopher Steele, one of the authors of the Golden Showers dossier. Both of
them wanted the Democratic minority on the committee to issue the invitations and secure
advance undertakings in writing from the Committee, including immunity from
US prosecution .
Waldman's telephone texts were exchanged with Senator Mark Warner, a former governor of
Virginia; Democratic Party runner for president; and at present vice-chairman of the
Intelligence Committee. The messages were leaked by Republicans in Congress to the Murdoch
media, and then confirmed by Warner himself.
Deripaska, Waldman told Warner, was trying to negotiate his testimony at the Intelligence
Committee against Manafort and the Trump presidential campaign in exchange for protection from
US Government sanctions. Exactly what Deripaska told Waldman he was ready to tell the Senate
Committee about Russian Government involvement with Manafort and the Trump election campaign
has not been disclosed because Waldman failed to get any concession for Deripaska from either
the Senators or from the Justice Department officials whom he was lobbying at the same
time.
Interpreting the series, a Fox News reporter claimed: "Over the course of four months
between February and May 2017, Warner and Waldman also exchanged dozens of [telephone] texts
about possible testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee from Deripaska, Waldman's primary
Russian billionaire client .In the dozens of text messages between February 2017 and May 2017,
Waldman also talked to Warner about getting Deripaska to cooperate with the intelligence
committee. There have been reports that Deripaska, who has sued Manafort over a failed business
deal, has information to share about the former Trump aide. In May 2017, the Senate and House
intelligence committees decided not to give Deripaska legal immunity in exchange for testimony
to the panels. The text messages between Warner and Waldman appeared to stop that month." Trump
responded by tweeting: "All tied into Crooked Hillary."
For the full story of Deripaska's relationship with Manafort, read this .
Assange was first mentioned by Waldman in a message to Warner on February 15, 2017. By then,
according to Ecuadorian Embassy meeting logs exposed only now, Waldman had met Assange
three times in January, and was planning to meet him again in March. Waldman told Warner that
for this he was acting "pro bono"; that's to say, Assange wasn't paying Waldman's bill. To
protect himself, Waldman also claimed that if US officials, including Warner, didn't appreciate
the value of Waldman's negotiations with Assange, he would stop them. In retrospect, Waldman
continued meeting Assange for another nine months. Waldman's trips to London and his expenses
there for at least some of those occasions were charged to other clients of Waldman's.
The significance of Waldman's messages about Assange were ignored in the US at the time of
their first release because US reporters were focused on Waldman's Russian connexion, and the
potential for damage the reporters believed this might do to Trump. Likewise, Waldman's reports
of what Assange told him have been ignored in the London media until the Guardian revealed the
Ecuadorian government reports on Assange and the visit logs. The Guardian's purpose, like the
earlier Murdoch media reporting, was to find a Kremlin connection.
In retrospect, the Waldman-Warner texts reveal that it was Assange's intention to use
Waldman to make a connection, not to the Kremlin, but to the US Government, trading Wikileaks
for Assange's freedom. Assange was requesting, so Waldman told Warner, safe passage to
Washington and release from threats of US prosecution in return for information regarding
"future leaks" and a promise not "to do something catastrophic for the dems, Obama, CIA and
national security". Waldman wrote that to Warner on February 16, 2017, adding: "I hope someone
will consider getting him to the US to ameliorate the damage".
On March 7, 2017, Wikileaks released publicly what Assange had already described to Waldman.
This was the start of publication of the CIA's Vault-7 and Vault-8 files. The files, claimed
Wikileaks, were "the largest ever publication of confidential documents by the agency." They
revealed the extent, cost and penetration, inside the US as well as globally, of CIA
cyber-warfare operations of many kinds, including hacker attacks which the CIA created as false
flags, making them appear to originate from Russian sources.
"Since 2001," Wikileaks announced , "the CIA has gained political and budgetary
preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not
just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force --
its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's hacking division freed it from having to
disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in
order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities. By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division,
which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000
registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and
other 'weaponized' malware."
Assange was quoted in the Wikileaks release as saying: "There is an extreme proliferation
risk in the development of cyber 'weapons'. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled
proliferation of such 'weapons', which results from the inability to contain them combined with
their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of 'Year Zero' goes
well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from
a political, legal and forensic perspective."
This was what Assange had told Waldman, days earlier, was the "something catastrophic" he
was planning. But Assange told Waldman more. He was willing to deal if the Justice Department
would agree to a quid pro quo. Waldman's messages to Warner confirm this; they also reveal that
Waldman got no swift response from Justice Department officials, so he asked Warner for his
help. Assange then started his slow release of the Vault-7 archive, one week at a time:
Assange's last publication in the CIA Vault series was on November 9. Waldman's last
meetings with Assange were in the same month.
What exactly were the terms Assange asked Waldman to trade with the Justice Department and
Warner's Intelligence Committee? Was he telling Waldman that he would stop the release of more
CIA Vault-7 documents in return for immunity from prosecution? Did he reveal to Waldman enough
information for the CIA and Justice Department to identify the source of the CIA documents?
Last week, on June 18, the US Attorney's office in Manhattan
announced that it had indicted a former CIA software engineer,
Joshua Schulte (right), as the source of the Wikileaks releases. Read the 14-page indictment
here .
Schulte, 29, had worked in the CIA's Engineering Development Group, which designed the hacking
tools used by its Center for Cyber Intelligence. In late 2016, he left the Agency and moved to
New York to work for Bloomberg. The prosecutors have charged thirteen counts against Schulte;
nine of them relate to the Wikileaks releases, and carry a total of 90 years' imprisonment on
conviction. Schulte has pleaded not guilty.
Bloomberg has
reported Schulte's indictment and court appearance, noting that after he left the CIA in
November 2016 he "worked briefly for Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News,
leaving the company in March 2017." Bloomberg has not been charged with gaining unlawful
advantage from Schulte's expertise. US media reporting the Schulte charges claim his
disclosures were one of the worst losses of classified documents in the CIA's history. Earlier
document releases through Wikileaks by Edward Snowden in 2013 came for the most part from the
National Security Agency (NSA), for which Snowden had been a contractor. He has been charged by
US prosecutors with espionage, and been granted asylum in Russia.
Wikileaks isn't named in the Schulte indictment; instead, it is referred to as
"Organization-1 which posted the Classified Information online". Schulte, the court papers
imply, obtained the classified information during 2016, in the months leading up to his
departure from the CIA in November of that year. Two months later Assange had the files,
because he told Waldman about them during their January meetings.
By the time in March, when Assange started publishing from Vault-7, investigators from the
CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had already identified Schulte as their
suspect. In last week's court papers it is revealed that Schulte was first interrogated by the
FBI within days of the first Wikileaks publication.
How did the FBI find its way so swiftly to Schulte? Had Waldman's contacts with the Justice
Department in February, relaying what Assange had told him, helped pinpoint Schulte as the
Wikileaks source?
Assange's current barrister in London is Jennifer Robinson of Doughty Street Chambers . She and a press spokesman,
Elina Gibbons-Plowright, were asked to clarify the meetings between Waldman and Assange which
had taken place in 2017. In addition to multiple telephone-calls to their offices, the
questions were recorded on Robinson's answer-phone and emailed. She and Gibbons-Plowright were
initially reluctant to respond.
Julian Assange and Jennifer Robinson during London court proceedings in 2011. Assange
took refuge at the Ecuador Embassy in June 2012; he was granted diplomatic asylum by the
Ecuador Government in August 2012, and Ecuadorian citizenship in December 2017. US threats to
have the UK Government arrest him and extradite him have been renewed by the Schulte indictment
of last week.
Then on Friday Robinson replied by email: "Mr Assange is cut off from phone and internet,
and is only permitted legal visits, so the only way I can put your questions to him is to
physically go into the embassy. I have no scheduled visits until next week. I trust you
understand the difficulties of his current circumstances and the impact of this in terms of
ability to provide comment and will acknowledge this in however you report this story."
I replied: "The Waldman-Assange meetings commenced, with your knowledge and counsel for your
client, more than a year ago. The SMS texts were published four months ago. Consequently, the
questions are for you to answer. You will know that Mr Waldman purports to be the one-man
employee of the Endeavor Law Firm PC, as well as the principal of Endeavor Group, a lobbying
firm. You knew that he and Mr Assange discussed matters of law and proposals for the US
Department of Justice."
The questions for Robinson were: 1. After meeting with Mr Assange in mid-February 2017, Mr
Waldman sent an SMS to Senator Mark Warner saying Mr Assange wanted "safe passage from the USG
to discuss the past and future leaks". Please explain what "safe passage" meant then. 2. In
February Mr Assange told Mr Waldman that he was planning "something catastrophic for the dems,
Obama, CIA and national security" – was that the Vault 7 disclosure? 3. Mr Waldman also
quoted Mr Assange as saying he wanted to go to the US "to ameliorate the damage" – what
did Mr Assange mean by "ameliorate the damage"? 4. Mr Waldman says Mr Assange agreed to
"serious and important concessions" for Mr Waldman to take directly to the US Department of
Justice and discuss with those officials. What were these concessions? 5. Within hours or days
of the first Wikileaks publication of the Vault 7 files, the FBI went to interview Joshua
Schulte. Did Mr Assange give Mr Waldman information or promise information about Mr Schulte to
help the FBI and CIA to identify him as a source for the Vault 7 files?
Robinson has not answered.
In Washington Waldman hides from email and telephone contact. His website contact email
address is secured behind a password barrier set up in Germany. His office telephone number
202-715-0966 provides an extension number 1006 for Waldman, but no message can be left on the
answer-phone. Waldman himself does not pick up during office hours. Neither is there an office
receptionist. The telephone directory number, like the email address, is a blind.
Questions were sent to Waldman's personal email address, which he has used to communicate
with me in the past. Waldman was asked to "clarify what were the client relationships and
purposes you held out to Mr Assange which the latter believed to be in his interest to pursue
as often with you as he appears to have done?" Waldman refuses to answer.
Harding, a Guardian correspondent in Moscow between 2007 and 2011, reported last week that
"US intelligence agencies concluded with 'high confidence' last year, in an unclassified
intelligence assessment, that the Kremlin shared hacked emails with WikiLeaks that undermined
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign as part of its effort to sway the 2016 election in
favour of Donald Trump." For identification of the faults of the US intelligence agency report,
read
this .
For months after the election in November 2016, Harding has suggested by innuendo, the
visits Waldman made to Assange from January to November 2017 – ten reportedly counted
from secret logs
obtained from the Ecuadorian Government -- indicate that Waldman, Assange and Deripaska
were scheming to advance Russian interests in the defeat of the Democratic Party campaign
against Trump.
"It is not clear why Waldman went to the WikiLeaks founder or whether the meetings had any
connection to the Russian billionaire, who is now subject to US sanctions", Harding reported,
then drawing his own conclusion: "But the disclosure is likely to raise further questions about
the extent and nature of Assange's alleged ties to Russia." This was Harding's cue for the
answer he has already decided – Waldman was Assange's back-channel to the Kremlin. In
November 2017, Harding had published a book with this conclusion in the
title, "Collusion – How Russia [sic] Helped [sic] Trump [sic] Win the White House". The
Latin qualifier has been added to identify the innuendoes for which Harding has reported no
conclusive evidence.
The headline claims the Ecuadorian surveillance reports on Assange count nine visits by
Waldman. In Harding's text, he reports three Waldman visits to Assange in January 2017; two in
March; three in April; and two in November. If accurately counted, they add up to ten. Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/ The Waldman telephone texts to Senator Warner which have been
published start in February 2017, and refer to contact with Assange which Waldman had had
already. In March, when Waldman met Assange twice, he told Warner he had "convinced him to make
serious and important concessions and am discussing those w/DOJ [with US Department of
Justice]."
The web and print displays of the story don't provide evidence for the reported connection
between Deripaska and Assange on which Harding sets store. Assange refused to reply to the
questions Harding had sent him; Waldman and Deripaska likewise.
Harding believes Assange met Waldman as a go-between through Deripaska to Moscow. It did not
occur to Harding that Assange was negotiating with Waldman for a deal with Washington.
Got my Economics Degree in 1971 – when they still taught the stuff. Maybe I
shouldn't, but I still go nuts when educated writers like yourself distort the origins of
Fascism. It was a three legged stool consisting of government, industry and labor. Taking
care of the working class was a key element. Also, being socialist, it was not market
oriented. Neoliberalism is exactly the opposite with it's 'lump of labor' and unregulated
markets. It arose in defense of the crushing fist of western capitalism and, had it not
been taken over by dictators, might have done the world a lot of good. Other than that you
wrote a nice piece. Keep it up
"... Trump's vision would seem to include protection of core industries, existing demographics and cultural institutions combined with an end of "democratization," which will result in an acceptance of foreign autocratic or non-conforming regimes as long as they do not pose military or economic threats. ..."
"... Sounds good, I countered but there is a space between genius and idiocy and that would be called insanity, best illustrated by impulsive, irrational behavior coupled with acute hypersensitivity over perceived personal insults and a demonstrated inability to comprehend either generally accepted facts or basic norms of personal and group behavior. ..."
"... Trump's basic objections were that Washington is subsidizing the defense of a wealthy Europe and thereby maintaining unnecessarily a relationship that perpetuates a state of no-war no-peace between Russia and the West. ..."
"... And the neoconservatives and globalists are striking back hard to make sure that détente stays in a bottle hidden somewhere on a shelf in the White House cloak room. Always adept at the creation of new front groups, the neocons have now launched something called the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), with the goal of "uni[ting] the center-left and the center-right." Its founders include the redoubtable Max Boot, The Washington Post's Anne Appelbaum, the inevitable Bill Kristol, and Richard Hurwitz of Council on Foreign Relations. RDI's website predictably calls for "fresh thinking" and envisions "the best minds from different countries com[ing] together for both broad and discrete projects in the service of liberty and democracy in the West and beyond." It argues that "Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces. Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right and left." ..."
"... There are also the internal contradictions in what Trump appears to be doing, suggesting that a brighter future might not be on the horizon even if giving the Europeans a possibly deserved bloody nose over their refusal to spend money defending themselves provides some satisfaction. In the last week alone in Syria the White House has quietly renewed funding for the so-called White Helmets, a terrorist front group. It has also warned that it will take action against the Syrian government for any violation of a "de-escalation zone" in the country's southwest that has been under the control of Washington. That means that the U.S., which is in Syria illegally, is warning that country's legitimate government that it should not attempt to re-establish control over a region that was until recently ruled by terrorists. ..."
"... In Syria there have been two pointless cruise missile attacks and a trap set up to kill Russian mercenaries. Washington's stated intention is to destabilize and replace President Bashar al-Assad while continuing the occupation of the Syrian oil fields. And in Afghanistan there are now more troops on the ground than there were on inauguration day together with no plan to bring them home. It is reported that the Pentagon has a twenty-year plan to finish the job but no one actually believes it will work. ..."
"... The United States is constructing new drone bases in Africa and Asia. It also has a new military base in Israel which will serve as a tripwire for automatic American involvement if Israel goes to war and has given the green light to the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. ..."
"... And then there are the petty insults that do not behoove a great power. A friend recently attended the Russian National Day celebration at the embassy in Washington. He reported that the U.S. government completely boycotted the event, together with its allies in Western Europe and the anglosphere, resulting in sparse attendance. It is the kind of slight that causes attitudes to shift when the time comes for serious negotiating. It is unnecessary and it is precisely the sort of thing that Russian President Vladimir Putin is referring to when he asks that his country be treated with "respect." The White House could have sent a delegation to attend the national day. Trump could have arranged it with a phone call, but he didn't. ..."
"... Winston Churchill once reportedly said that to "Jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war." As one of the twentieth century's leading warmongers, he may not have actually meant it, but in principle he was right. So let us hope for the best coming out of Singapore and also for the G-7 or what replaces it in the future. But don't be confused or diverted by presidential grandstanding. Watch what else is going on outside the limelight and, at least for the present, it is not pretty. ..."
"... Phil nails it as usual. Like him, I'm not very optimistic. Whether overall one approves or disapproves of Trump (and count me as a disapprover), it is obvious that most of the government is operating outside his control and this includes many of his own appointees. The continuities of US policy are far deeper than the apparent discontinuities. ..."
I had coffee with a foreign friend a week ago. The subject of Donald Trump inevitably came
up and my friend said that he was torn between describing Trump as a genius or as an idiot, but
was inclined to lean towards genius. He explained that Trump was willy-nilly establishing a new
world order that will succeed the institutionally exhausted post-World War 2 financial and
political arrangements that more-or-less established U.S. hegemony over the "free world." The
Bretton Woods agreement and the founding of the United Nations institutionalized the spread of
liberal democracy and free trade, creating a new, post war international order under the firm
control of the United States with the American dollar as the benchmark currency. Trump is now
rejecting what has become an increasingly dominant global world order in favor of returning to
a nineteenth century style nationalism that has become popular as countries struggle to retain
their cultural and political identifies. Trump's vision would seem to include protection of
core industries, existing demographics and cultural institutions combined with an end of
"democratization," which will result in an acceptance of foreign autocratic or non-conforming
regimes as long as they do not pose military or economic threats.
Sounds good, I countered but there is a space between genius and idiocy and that would be
called insanity, best illustrated by impulsive, irrational behavior coupled with acute
hypersensitivity over perceived personal insults and a demonstrated inability to comprehend
either generally accepted facts or basic norms of personal and group behavior.
Inevitably, I have other friends who follow foreign policy closely that have various
interpretations of the Trump phenomenon. One sees the respectful meeting with Kim Jong-un of
North Korea as a bit of brilliant statesmanship, potentially breaking a sixty-five year logjam
and possibly opening the door to further discussions that might well avert a nuclear war. And
the week also brought a Trump welcome suggestion that Russia should be asked to rejoin the G-7
group of major industrialized democracies, which also has to be seen as a positive step. There
has also been talk of a Russia-U.S. summit similar to that with North Korea to iron out
differences, an initiative that was first suggested by Trump and then agreed to by Russian
President Vladimir Putin. There will inevitably be powerful resistance to such an arrangement
coming primarily from the U.S. media and from Congress, but Donald Trump seems to fancy the
prospect and it just might take place.
One good friend even puts a positive spin on Trump's insulting behavior towards America's
traditional allies at the recent G-7 meeting in Canada. She observes that Trump's basic
objections were that Washington is subsidizing the defense of a wealthy Europe and thereby
maintaining unnecessarily a relationship that perpetuates a state of no-war no-peace between
Russia and the West. And the military costs exacerbate some genuine serious trade imbalances
that damage the U.S. economy. If Trumpism prevails, G-7 will become a forum for discussions of
trade and economic relations and will become less a club of nations aligned military against
Russia and, eventually, China. As she put it, changing its constituency would be a triumph of
"mercantilism" over "imperialism." The now pointless NATO alliance might well find itself
without much support if the members actually have to fully fund it proportionate to their GDPs
and could easily fade away, which would be a blessing for everyone.
My objection to nearly all the arguments being made in favor or opposed to what occurred in
Singapore last week is that the summit is being seen out of context, as is the outreach to
Russia at G-7. Those who are in some cases violently opposed to the outcome of the talks with
North Korea are, to be sure, sufferers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, where they hate
anything he does and spin their responses to cast him in the most negative terms possible. Some
others who choose to see daylight in spite of the essential emptiness of the "agreement" are
perhaps being overly optimistic while likewise ignoring what else is going on.
And the neoconservatives and globalists are striking back hard to make sure that
détente stays in a bottle hidden somewhere on a shelf in the White House cloak room.
Always adept at the creation of new front groups, the neocons have now launched something
called the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), with the goal of "uni[ting] the center-left and
the center-right." Its founders include the redoubtable Max Boot, The Washington Post's Anne
Appelbaum, the inevitable Bill Kristol, and Richard Hurwitz of Council on Foreign Relations.
RDI's website predictably calls for "fresh thinking" and envisions "the best minds from
different countries com[ing] together for both broad and discrete projects in the service of
liberty and democracy in the West and beyond." It argues that "Liberal democracy is in crisis
around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces.
Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia
and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right
and left."
There are also the internal contradictions in what Trump appears to be doing, suggesting
that a brighter future might not be on the horizon even if giving the Europeans a possibly
deserved bloody nose over their refusal to spend money defending themselves provides some
satisfaction. In the last week alone in Syria the White House has quietly renewed funding for
the so-called White Helmets, a terrorist front group. It has also warned that it will take
action against the Syrian government for any violation of a "de-escalation zone" in the
country's southwest that has been under the control of Washington. That means that the U.S.,
which is in Syria illegally, is warning that country's legitimate government that it should not
attempt to re-establish control over a region that was until recently ruled by
terrorists.
And then there is also Donald Trump's recent renunciation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), eliminating a successful program that was preventing nuclear proliferation on
the part of Iran and replacing it with nothing whatsoever apart from war as a possible way of
dealing with the potential problem. Indeed, Trump has been prepared to use military force on
impulse, even when there is no clear casus belli. In Syria there have been two pointless
cruise missile attacks and a trap set up to kill Russian mercenaries. Washington's stated
intention is to destabilize and replace President Bashar al-Assad while continuing the
occupation of the Syrian oil fields. And in Afghanistan there are now more troops on the ground
than there were on inauguration day together with no plan to bring them home. It is reported
that the Pentagon has a twenty-year plan to finish the job but no one actually believes it will
work.
The United States is constructing new drone bases in Africa and Asia. It also has a new
military base in Israel which will serve as a tripwire for automatic American involvement if
Israel goes to war and has given the green light to the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.
In Latin America, Washington has backed off from détente with Cuba and has been
periodically threatening some kind of intervention in Venezuela. In Europe, it is engaged in
aggressive war games on the Russian borders, most recently in Norway and Poland. The
Administration has ordered increased involvement in Somalia and has special ops units operating
– and dying – worldwide. Overall, it is hardly a return to the Garden of Eden.
And then there are the petty insults that do not behoove a great power. A friend recently
attended the Russian National Day celebration at the embassy in Washington. He reported that
the U.S. government completely boycotted the event, together with its allies in Western Europe
and the anglosphere, resulting in sparse attendance. It is the kind of slight that causes
attitudes to shift when the time comes for serious negotiating. It is unnecessary and it is
precisely the sort of thing that Russian President Vladimir Putin is referring to when he asks
that his country be treated with "respect." The White House could have sent a delegation to
attend the national day. Trump could have arranged it with a phone call, but he didn't.
Winston Churchill once reportedly said that to "Jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war."
As one of the twentieth century's leading warmongers, he may not have actually meant it, but in
principle he was right. So let us hope for the best coming out of Singapore and also for the
G-7 or what replaces it in the future. But don't be confused or diverted by presidential
grandstanding. Watch what else is going on outside the limelight and, at least for the present,
it is not pretty.
The Establishment (which includes both major political parties) is furious that Trump may be
defusing the (very real) nuclear threat from Kim for the price of a few plane tickets and
dinners, while the Establishment was gung-ho for throwing away a few trillion dollars,
hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, and our nation's once-good reputation in the process
of neutralizing Saddam Hussein, who didn't even have any nukes to begin with. Yep, they're
sore all right.
Phil nails it as usual. Like him, I'm not very optimistic. Whether overall one approves or
disapproves of Trump (and count me as a disapprover), it is obvious that most of the
government is operating outside his control and this includes many of his own appointees. The
continuities of US policy are far deeper than the apparent discontinuities.
As we await info on Kim-Trump, I think it wise to examine what Trump's outbursts at and
beyond the G6+1 are based upon--his understanding of Economic Nationalism. Fortunately,
we have
an excellent, recent, Valdai Club paper addressing the topic that's not too technical or
lengthy. The author references two important papers by Lavrov and Putin that ought to be read
afterwards. Lavrov's
is the elder and ought to be first. Putin's Belt & Road International Forum
Address, 2017 provides an excellent example of the methods outlined in the first paper.
I
could certainly add more, but IMO these provide an excellent basis for comprehending Trump's
motivations as he's clearly reacting to the Russian and Chinese initiatives. Furthermore, one
can discover why Russia now holds the EU at arms length while
Putin's "I told
you so" reminder had to sting just a bit.
Then to recap it all, I highly suggest reading Pepe Escobar's excellent article I linked to yesterday higher up in the thread.
From comments: "Putin, if people would listen, proposes a model that I find acceptable. Respect for
national sovereignty and government institutions. In this model, yes, we would tolerate
authoritarian governments as long as they respect the sovereignty and stability of other
countries." But the problem with this statement is the dynamics of American Imperialism, which would not tolerate any
government which is not a vassal.
Notable quotes:
"... Idealism in foreign policy is, by definition, the pursuit of a dreamy vision of a better world that does not seriously ask whether the ideal is actually compatible with reality. Illusions set idealists up for terrible surprises. Addressing problems through, for example, the lens of Fukuyama-style Hegelian idealism, according to which the world is inexorably progressing toward liberal democratic values, would in today's world be not only absurd but dangerous. ..."
"... When realist thinkers -- from Machiavelli to Kissinger -- prick the bubbles of the dreamers, they incur only wrath. For idealists, it is the height of cynicism and bad manners to point out that cunning and force are what actually dominate world affairs. ..."
"... For Kissinger, peace depends upon "a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a general equilibrium of power." The Peace of Westphalia and, to some degree, the Congress of Vienna embodied such an arrangement, offering the lesson that balance-of-power theory is indispensable in analyzing world events. ..."
"... However, Kissinger was intellectually astute enough to recognize that, in order to create and maintain this equilibrium of power, something more than a mechanical balance is required: enlightened statesmen. Kissinger states explicitly that balance-of-power "does not in itself secure peace." If world leaders refuse to play by Westphalian rules, the system will break down. He warns of the rise of radical Islamists, for example, who refuse to think in Westphalian terms. ..."
"... Morality in foreign affairs, then, is not found in a set of abstract rules of behavior for nation-states, nor is it found in deploying military power to advance some progressive, idealistic cause. Morality can be found only in the souls of righteous statesmen who, under complex international circumstances, act not out of malice or hatred, nor out of greed or pure self-interest, but who find a path to peace that is compatible not only with the interest of their own nations but that of the others. ..."
"... Just had to correct that one sentence, there. Kissinger had no problem intervening in the affairs of "independent states" that posed little military or political threat to the United States, but perhaps threatened the commercial interests, profits or market share of American companies and capitalists. ..."
"... The record of the foreign policy realists, Republican or Democratic, is drenched in blood, from Afghanistan, Indonesia and Angola to Chile, Nicaragua and Guatemala, not to mention Cambodia from Nixon to Carter to Reagan. And the long-term consequences of their decisions (Iran in 1953, Afghanistan under Carter and Brezinski) can bite the rest of us pretty hard, too. Hell, George H.W. Bush and James Baker brought us the first Iraq War, which should have been left to the Arab League to solve (and, frankly, I give not a whit for the independence of the Emirs of Kuwait). ..."
"... An American imperialist is still, when all is said and done, an American imperialist, and woe be to any small, non-nuclear independent state that gets in the way of said imperialist making the world safe for ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs or Citibank. ..."
"... What Machiavelli wrote is that statesmen should advocate conventional religious morality as the default position in most circumstances but when faced with an existential emergency they must sacrifice their soul to not do good and use evil but only as an occasion calls for it to protect the nation. ..."
"... Putin, if people would listen, proposes a model that I find acceptable. Respect for national sovereignty and government institutions. In this model, yes, we would tolerate authoritarian governments as long as they respect the sovereignty and stability of other countries. ..."
"... Kissinger is famous for his attachment to the balance of power concept, particularly in relation to the Congress of Vienna, but I always think that he leaves out the main point. The balance of power wasn't an end in itself. It was a means to the end that the European powers wanted to achieve, namely, the restoration of the "ancien régime". The idea of the balance of powers was to prevent the Great Powers getting into fights with each other, leading to mutual destruction, which, indeed, is what ultimately happened in 1914. ..."
"... There are countless examples where realists cherry-picked the facts (variables). ..."
"... Good discussion. Machiavelli's central insight is that a national leader must get their hands dirty, even to the point of committing evil, to protect the nation from disaster, to reform corruption, to remove internal insurrectionists. But using evil for good is limited to only those real (realistic) threats against the nation. According to Machiavelli in his Discourses, glory is reserved for those who are the founders of republics, reformers or religious leaders of a nation, military leaders followed by literature writers and artists who reflect republican virtues. Contra William Smith, foreign policy can not ALWAYS be "just and moral", which is an idealistic a notion. ..."
Great power competition is everywhere these days -- in Syria, Ukraine, the South China Sea,
North Korea. With the rise of China and the rejuvenation of Russian military power, realist
thinking is suddenly back in vogue, as it should be.
Idealism in foreign policy is, by definition, the pursuit of a dreamy vision of a better
world that does not seriously ask whether the ideal is actually compatible with reality.
Illusions set idealists up for terrible surprises. Addressing problems through, for example,
the lens of Fukuyama-style Hegelian idealism, according to which the world is inexorably
progressing toward liberal democratic values, would in today's world be not only absurd but
dangerous. The liberal idea that the UN can foster world order through international
institutions is likewise naïve and perilous. Fantasy lands in art and literature can be
wonderful divertissements , but using them as the basis for great nation's foreign
policy can produce nightmares.
George W. Bush created a dream world in his mind where it seemed plausible for American
military power to end "tyranny in our world." Tyranny, as anyone who has not slipped the bonds
of reality knows, is rooted in the human soul and cannot be "ended." Tyranny can be checked and
mitigated, but only through extraordinary effort and with the help of a rich tradition.
But it is always easier to assign oneself virtue based on self-applauding and unrealistic
notions about world peace. When realist thinkers -- from Machiavelli to Kissinger -- prick the
bubbles of the dreamers, they incur only wrath. For idealists, it is the height of cynicism and
bad manners to point out that cunning and force are what actually dominate world affairs.
Yet for all their sagacity, realist thinkers are not without their problems either. They
tend to deny the moral nature of human beings and the role that this may play in world events.
Because they have seen the great danger of moralistic idealism in foreign policy, they
sometimes don't think morality should be considered at all. Realist theory has a cold, inhumane
quality that makes it inattentive to the moral dimension of human existence.
The failure of realists to incorporate moral considerations into their thinking has made
realism unpopular with the American people, who historically believe that their nation's
foreign policy should have at least some moral content. They, after all, send their own boys
and girls to war, and they would like to think that those sacrifices are not made for some
mechanistic balance of power. They know that statesmen must often make cold calculations in the
national interest, but surely somewhere in there must be right and wrong, as in all human
endeavors.
Because some realists have adopted the philosophically untenable position that morality has
no role in world affairs, many Americans have signed on with the moralists' disastrous crusades
instead. The realists have the stronger policy case, but they have ceded the moral ground to
the idealists.
Ironically, it may be the work of Henry Kissinger that can show realists an intellectual
path toward restoring a sense of morality in foreign policy.
For Kissinger, peace depends upon "a system of independent states refraining from
interference in each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a
general equilibrium of power." The Peace of Westphalia and, to some degree, the Congress of
Vienna embodied such an arrangement, offering the lesson that balance-of-power theory is
indispensable in analyzing world events.
However, Kissinger was intellectually astute enough to recognize that, in order to
create and maintain this equilibrium of power, something more than a mechanical balance is
required: enlightened statesmen. Kissinger states explicitly that balance-of-power "does not in
itself secure peace." If world leaders refuse to play by Westphalian rules, the system will
break down. He warns of the rise of radical Islamists, for example, who refuse to think in
Westphalian terms.
Kissinger also says that enlightened leaders must not only recognize the realities of power
politics and the hard Machiavellian truths of international competition, but possess a certain
moral quality that he calls "restraint." Without a willingness to restrain themselves and to
act dispassionately, world leaders will be incapable of building an international order. When
facing difficult challenges, enlightened diplomats and statesmen must have the moral courage to
accept certain "limits of permissible action." Implicit in Kissinger's thought is that
morality, though of a realistic kind, is essential in foreign policy. Only statesmen of a
certain temperament and moral character can support the Westphalian model.
Morality in foreign affairs, then, is not found in a set of abstract rules of behavior
for nation-states, nor is it found in deploying military power to advance some progressive,
idealistic cause. Morality can be found only in the souls of righteous statesmen who, under
complex international circumstances, act not out of malice or hatred, nor out of greed or pure
self-interest, but who find a path to peace that is compatible not only with the interest of
their own nations but that of the others. Such a policy cannot be sketched out in the
abstract in advance; it can emerge only through the moral leadership of genuine statesmen who
act to find a specific solution in a set of complex, concrete circumstances. This is one of the
great lessons of classical political philosophy: justice is not an abstraction but found
concretely in the soul of the just man.
The answer to the question of what a just and moral foreign policy might look like is that
it's the kind that truly just and moral, but also supremely realistic, statesmen will adopt.
That such statesmen are rare is what has caused the great philosophers to lament that only the
dead have seen the end of war.
William S. Smith is managing director and research fellow at the Center for the Study of
Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America.
Implicit in Kissinger's thought is that morality, though of a realistic kind, is essential
in foreign policy. Only statesmen of a certain temperament and moral character can support
the Westphalian model.
1) In 1971, the government of Pakistan carried out a genocide of its Hindu minority in
what is now Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Somewhere between 1 and 3 million Hindus were
killed, and many thousands of Bengali Muslim leaders and intellectuals were murdered by the
Pakistani regime.
Kissinger and Nixon supported Yahya Khan's government, and even shipped weapons to
Pakistan while the genocide was going on.
From Gary Bass's article in the New Yorker:
While the slaughter in what would soon become an independent Bangladesh was underway,
the C.I.A. and State Department conservatively estimated that roughly two hundred thousand
people had died (the official Bangladeshi death toll is three million). Some ten million
Bengali refugees fled to India, where untold numbers died in miserable conditions in refugee
camps. Pakistan was a Cold War ally of the United States, and Richard Nixon and his
national-security advisor, Henry Kissinger, resolutely supported its military dictatorship;
they refused to impose pressure on Pakistan's generals to forestall further
atrocities.
2) Kissinger was one of key organizers of the 1973 coup against the democratically elected
Allende government in Chile. When Allende was elected, this moral stalwart told his staff "I
don't see any reason why we should stand around and do nothing when a country goes communist
because of the irresponsibility of its own people."
In the first months after the coup d'état, the military killed thousands of
Chilean leftists, both real and suspected, or forced their "disappearance". The military
imprisoned 40,000 political enemies in the National Stadium of Chile In October 1973, the
Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara, and 70 other political killings were perpetrated by
the death squad, Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte).
The government arrested some 130,000 people in a three-year period; the dead and
disappeared numbered thousands.
****************
Tom Lehrer once said that satire died when Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Fortunately William Smith's article about Kissinger's "morality" shows that comedy is not yet
dead, even if the comic relief is inadvertent.
For Kissinger, peace depends upon "a system of MAJOR POWERS refraining from interference in
each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a general
equilibrium of power."
Just had to correct that one sentence, there. Kissinger had no problem intervening in the
affairs of "independent states" that posed little military or political threat to the United
States, but perhaps threatened the commercial interests, profits or market share of American
companies and capitalists.
The record of the foreign policy realists, Republican or Democratic, is drenched in blood,
from Afghanistan, Indonesia and Angola to Chile, Nicaragua and Guatemala, not to mention
Cambodia from Nixon to Carter to Reagan. And the long-term consequences of their decisions
(Iran in 1953, Afghanistan under Carter and Brezinski) can bite the rest of us pretty hard,
too. Hell, George H.W. Bush and James Baker brought us the first Iraq War, which should have
been left to the Arab League to solve (and, frankly, I give not a whit for the independence
of the Emirs of Kuwait).
Would the realists have responded to the 2009 coup in Honduras with any more morality than
Hilary Clinton did? Would the economic war upon Venezuela be any less damaging than it has
been under Bush II, Obama or Trump? Yes, some of the realists would not have launched the
invasion of Iraq, but would they have lifted the sanctions regime on Iraq? Would they have
restrained the Saudis in Yemen?
An American imperialist is still, when all is said and done, an American imperialist, and
woe be to any small, non-nuclear independent state that gets in the way of said imperialist
making the world safe for ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs or Citibank.
Dr. Smith apparently has a misunderstanding about Machiavelli's realism being devoid of
morality.
What Machiavelli wrote is that statesmen should advocate conventional religious morality
as the default position in most circumstances but when faced with an existential emergency
they must sacrifice their soul to not do good and use evil but only as an occasion calls for
it to protect the nation.
Example: Truman authorizing the dropping on A-bombs on Japan;
Churchill not warning the City of Coventry they were to be bombed by the Luftwaffe in WW II
because to warn them would have revealed that the Brits had cracked the German secret codes;
and Pres. Reagan freeing American hostages in Iran in exchange for drug money to fund the
Contras in Nicaragua.
This is in sharp contrast to statesmen (women) such as Hillary Clinton
who used evil gratuitously by taking bribes from foreign nations to fund her foundation; or
Pres. Bill Clinton who "wagged the dog" by bombing a drug factory in Sudan to divert
attention away from a sex scandal.
Machiavelli was not anti-religious or anti-morality,
contrary to pop explanations by liberal media, novels and academics (read Erica Benner's book
Machiavelli's Ethics).
Henry Kissinger as a moral man? I really wish you had a better example to prove your valid
point. The man who was responsible for the murder of millions in Indo China including the
bombing of non combatant countries like Laos is hardly qualified to talk about morality of
anything.
Im not sure morality is even possible. I wonder if it ever was possible.
Everyone in the west is taught the values of multicultural and diversity while the rest of
the world is still tribal. It is those tribes who we (US) considers allies which are
controlling much of our foreign policy. The other constituency is just as old and its the
monied class or the corporations whose only goal is to maintain and grow revenue.
Thank god we have domestic and international law which constrains our foreign policy to
moral issues.
These terms get murky.
Neocons are idealists but most definitely believe in great power competition and dominance.
U.S. interests can only be protected if authoritarian regimes are replaced by pro-U.S.
Democratic govts which is why we were so aggressive in expanding our influence in Eastern
Europe, often through covert means and by force in the M.E. I never had much use for the term 'realism'.
Putin, if people would listen, proposes a model that I find acceptable. Respect for
national sovereignty and government institutions. In this model, yes, we would tolerate
authoritarian governments as long as they respect the sovereignty and stability of other
countries.
We have been brainwashed to consider him an offender in this model because of Ukraine but
his response was a minimalist response to a crisis on his border. We go on crusades and
experiment on other countries thousands of miles away from our shores.
Kissinger is famous for his attachment to the balance of power concept, particularly in
relation to the Congress of Vienna, but I always think that he leaves out the main point. The
balance of power wasn't an end in itself. It was a means to the end that the European powers
wanted to achieve, namely, the restoration of the "ancien régime". The idea of the
balance of powers was to prevent the Great Powers getting into fights with each other,
leading to mutual destruction, which, indeed, is what ultimately happened in 1914.
Westphalia
was a slightly different situation. A 30-year, on again–off again, triangular German
"civil war" between Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists, with much foreign interference, had
reached a stalemate, which, in practice, amounted to a Catholic defeat. The only way out was
to let everybody keep what they had and agree not to try to take more. It was forced
forbearance rather than balance.
In Europe, at least, peace certainly depends upon "a system of independent states refraining
from interference in each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions
through a general equilibrium of power". The European Union is the modern expression of that
principle.
That's why Putin's interferences in Ukraine's domestic affairs and his undisguised
attempts to destroy the EU have set off alarm bells all across Europe and why US
unwillingness to check his ambitions is making the EU the only viable option to ensure peace
in Europe.
Kissinger is an extremely bad person to cite on the subject of morality in a realist foreign
policy. John Quincey Adam's would be better. Coincidentally, TAC printed him on this very
subject --
"Idealism in foreign policy is, by definition, the pursuit of a dreamy vision of a better
world"
It need not be that. The "vision thing" that Bush I famously did not do could well be a
part of our national interest, one of the things coldly evaluated, and contributing to our
strength when done correctly.
Of Wayne Lusvardi's examples of "existential" emergencies for which evil can be done to
"protect the nation," "Truman authorizing the dropping on A-bombs on Japan" is at best
debatable given the evidence that the Japanese were willing to surrender as long as they
could keep their emperor, and especially to keep the Soviets from declaring war on them,
while "Churchill not warning the City of Coventry they were to be bombed by the Luftwaffe in
WW II" is legitimate, in my opinion.
But "Reagan freeing American hostages in Iran in exchange for drug money to fund the
Contras in Nicaragua" is laughable. American pride may have needed protection from the
hostage "crisis," but the American nation certainly did not, as it was not threatened in any
way. American foreign policy continued on its way, funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan,
backing the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese Stalinists who drove them from power in
Cambodia, and buying off Egypt, so you can't even say that America's "standing in the world"
particularly suffered from the hostage "crisis."
And as for "Pres. Bill Clinton who 'wagged the dog' by bombing a drug factory in Sudan to
divert attention away from a sex scandal," I'll trump that shameful episode with Pres. Ronald
Reagan invading Grenada two days after the Beirut barracks bombing.
Our D.I. In basic training in his frustration to turn raw recruits into soldiers would raise
his arms to the sky imploring the aid of the Commander-in-Chief in the heavens and holler,
"Dear Lord, give'em books and all they do is eat'em!" That's the way I viewed William Smith's
essay on the need for an infusion of a reconstituted morality in our foreign policy.
After
basic training, I then served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam, where I was confronted with
the grim and brutal reality of that quagmire and learned that the road to hell is paved with
good intentions. LBJ would come to regret calling South Vietnam President Ndo Dinh Diem the
"Churchill of Asia." There lies the dilemma when idealism confronts reality.
More generally,
I disagree with the centrality of the Westphalian concept of what constitutes a nation in the
post-modern world. Smith mentions the influence of non-actors such as jihadists to alter our
foreign policy goals but overlooks how corporations have also altered that concept with their
doctrine of globalization for profits which undercuts national sovereignty established in
Westphalia. Smith seems to be wandering between two worlds, "one dead / The other peerless to
be born" as Mathew Arnold lamented in his poem "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse."
Smith is
trying to promote a revisionist history of the last fifty years just as Niall Ferguson did in
the first volume of his authorized biography of Henry Kissinger as an idealist. Ferguson
notes even Kissinger obviously knew the war was a lost cause after he did two fact-finding
tours in South Vietnam early in the war but thought the war was still necessary to prosecute
to save a vestige of our credibility as policeman to the world. Ken Burns also attempts a
revisionist coup of the Vietnam War when he editorialized in his documentary that our
fearless leaders prosecuted that war with the best intentions. So unfortunately, I view this
essay as a current trend to to promote revisionism in our history of the last fifty years
despite the contrary conclusions of the historical facts.
But as John Adams, a foundering
father, once observed "facts are stubborn things."
I agree-Putin's response to our actions is often not even considered: The biggest flaw with realism that it's like a multivariate experiment
-- with everyone
having different variables they think to be relevant. For instance, Kissinger thought Vietnam would fall under Chinese influence under Communist
NVA, yet he ignored the variable of ethnic rivalries between Chinese and Vietnamese. GWB ignored the variables of Iran -- how it would swoop in and nurture newly Shia Iraq..
There are countless examples where realists cherry-picked the facts (variables).
Vietnam: perhaps the only conflict fought on half of another of but minor, if any real
benefit to the US. That with or without Sec. Kissinger is clear as day. As for quagmires --
it seems that all ward have them. Vietnam was a quagmire because our policy was one of
protect and hold as opposed to invade and conquer -- an unfortunate choice. In the world of a
realist, we should have killed any and all Vietcong, raced up to Hanoi and ended the matter.
'nough said.
I am not sure many here are reading the same article, because my take is that the author
is claiming that Sec Kissinger was a realist -- practical – what needed to be done to
accomplish task A -- morality doesn't enter into it. That explains why he found Pres Nixon's
faith amusing. So all of the comments bemoaning the Sec lack of moral attend, only confirms
the realists perspective.
Nonetheless,
I disagree with your version of the last seventeen years. it has not been orchestrated or
led by realists. Quite the opposite. The rhetoric may be couched in all manner of idealism ,
but so was their application of force.
A realist would not give a lick aboy religious affiliation to the aims of regime chang,
cpital market or democracy creation. The onlu factor that would have mattered is who was on
board, or not in the way -- all challengers regardless of their faith, political agendas,
personality, or concerned about symbols as nonsensical historical artifacts would moved aside
by any means necessary. A realist so engaging such large opposition would decided the matter
-- to utter destruction to complete compliance – period.
In fact, I will contend that these pseudo realists, were thwarted by their own bouts if
idealist moral relativity and were the worst sort for the job at hand.
What a joke of an article, Kissinger as a moralist. He is one of the major war criminals of
the second half of the 20th Century. He has the blood of hundreds of thousands if not
millions on his hands, as others above have details. And not all foreigners. Lest we forget
the part he played in Nixon's great lies about Vietnam that delayed a peace settlement to
help Nixon get elected. 30,000 dead Americans later we got pretty much the same settlement.
The author of this article has entered into the realm of the absurd.
Wow, I thought I wasn't ever going to read anything on economic war on Venezuela! Finally,
even if it is from the comments.
There is an article about not to support/encourage a cup here, but obviously, when it is
about the bad economic situation, only the leftish govenrments are blamed, as if Venezuela
wasn't thoroughly dependet on debt.
Besides of that, even if that mention weren't thre, I agree and thanks most of the
comments in this article.
Good discussion. Machiavelli's central insight is that a national leader must get their
hands dirty, even to the point of committing evil, to protect the nation from disaster, to
reform corruption, to remove internal insurrectionists. But using evil for good is limited to
only those real (realistic) threats against the nation. According to Machiavelli in his
Discourses, glory is reserved for those who are the founders of republics, reformers or
religious leaders of a nation, military leaders followed by literature writers and artists
who reflect republican virtues. Contra William Smith, foreign policy can not ALWAYS be "just
and moral", which is an idealistic a notion.
If, as Samuel Johnson is reputed to have said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"
then using Kissinger as an example of realism is the last refuge of a fantasist.
Questionable but interesting. "Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant
bully.
To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again." Trump really believe like a typical bully.
In case of tough resistance he folds and appologize. Otherwise he tries to press opooneent into complete submission.
Notable quotes:
"... The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. ..."
"... Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense strategy. ..."
"... Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change, reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the Shah. ..."
"... Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC's power to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the executive branch. ..."
"... Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street. ..."
"... Trump's unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that military threats led to North Korea's "capitulation" – its promise to end its nuclear program. ..."
"... Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger 'madman' tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable' demands or face the worst from the President? I don't think so. ..."
"... China got Trumps to waiver ZTE ruling, with Huawei declared no longer a threat to US security. ..."
"... "Speaking to soon-to-be graduates of the Virginia Military Institute on Wednesday, Tillerson dropped this truth bomb: "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom." Woof. ..."
For some time, critics of President Trump's policies have attributed them to a mental
disorder; uncontrolled manic-depression, narcissus bullying and other pathologies. The question
of Trump's mental health raises a deeper question: why do his pathologies take a specific
political direction? Moreover, Trump's decisions have a political history and background, and
follow from a logic and belief in the reason and logic of imperial power.
We will examine the reason why Trump has embraced three strategic decisions which have
world-historic consequences, namely: Trump's reneging the nuclear accord with Iran ;Trump's
declaration of a trade war with China; and Trump's meeting with North Korea.
In brief we will explore the political reasons for his decisions; what he expects to gain;
and what is his game plan if he fails to secure his expected outcome and his adversaries take
reprisals.
Trump's Strategic Framework
The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more
intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a
corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity
or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and
further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In
other words, Trump's politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump's
policies will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives
would undermine US imperial rule.
Reasons Why Trump Broke the Peace Accord with Iran
Trump broke the accord with Iran because the original agreement was based on retaining US
sanctions against Iran; the total dismantling of its nuclear program and calling into question
Iran's limited role on behalf of possible allies in the Middle East.
Iran's one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities encouraged
Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its markets.
Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes
that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon
(Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense
strategy.
Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change,
reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the
Shah.
The second reason for Trump's policy is to strengthen Israel's military power in the Middle
East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the US,
dubbed 'the Lobby'.
Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented
power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC's power
to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the
executive branch.
Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and
adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street.
Trump's submission to Zionist power reinforces and even dictates his decision to break the
peace accord with Iran and his willingness to pressure. France, Germany, the UK and Russia to
sacrifice billion-dollar trade agreements with Iran and to pursue a policy of pressuring
Teheran to accept part of Trump's agenda of unilateral disarmament and isolation. Trump
believes he can force the EU multi-nationals to disobey their governments and abide by
sanctions.
Reasons for Trump's Trade War with China
Prior to Trump's presidency, especially under President Obama, the US launched a trade war
and 'military pivot' to China. Obama proposed the Trans-Pacific Pact to exclude China and
directed an air and naval armada to the South China Sea. Obama established a high-powered
surveillance system in South Korea and supported war exercises on North Korea's border. Trump's
policy deepened and radicalized Obama's policies.
Trump extended Obama's bellicose policy toward North Korea, demanding the de-nuclearization
of its defense program. President Kim of North Korea and President Moon of South Korea reached
an agreement to open negotiations toward a peace accord ending nearly 60 years of
hostility.
However, President Trump joined the conversation on the presumption that North Korea's peace
overtures were due to his threats of war and intimidation. He insisted that any peace
settlement and end of economic sanctions would only be achieved by unilateral nuclear
disarmament, the maintenance of US forces on the peninsula and supervision by US approved
inspectors.
Trump's unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that
military threats led to North Korea's "capitulation" – its promise to end its nuclear
program.
Trump slapped a trade tariff on over $100 billion dollars of Chinese exports in order to
reduce its trade imbalance by $200 billion over two years. He demanded China unilaterally end
industrial 'espionage', technological 'theft' (all phony accusations) and China's compliance
monitored quarterly by the US. Trump demanded that China not retaliate with tariffs or restrictions or face bigger
sanctions. Trump threatened to respond to any reciprocal tariff by Beijing, with greater tariffs, and
restrictions on Chinese goods and services.
Trump's goals seek to convert North Korea into a military satellite encroaching on China's
northern border; and a trade war that drives China into an economic crisis. Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and
dominate the Asian and world economy.
Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump believes
that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the 'dynamic' US market, will enhance
Washington's quest for uncontested world domination.
Trump's Ten Erroneous Thesis
Trump's political agenda is deeply flawed! Breaking the nuclear agreement and imposing harsh
sanctions has isolated Trump from his European and Asian allies. His military intervention will
inflame a regional war that would destroy the Saudi oil fields. He will force Iran to pursue a
nuclear shield against US-Israeli aggression and lead to a prolonged, costly and ultimately
losing war.
Trump's policies will unify all Iranians, liberals and nationalist, and undermine US
collaborators. The entire Muslim world will unify forces and carry the conflict throughout
Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Tel Aviv's bombing [of Iran] will lead to counter-attacks
in Israel.
Oil prices will skyrocket, financial markets will collapse, industries will go bankrupt.
Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction.
Trump's trade war with China will lead to the disruption of the supply chain which sustains
the US economy and especially the 500 US multi-nationals who depend on the Chinese economy for
exports to the US. China will increase domestic consumption, diversify its markets and trading
partners and reinforce its military alliance with Russia. China has greater resilience and
capacity to overcome short-term disruption and regain its dominant role as a global economic
power house.
Wall Street will suffer a catastrophic financial collapse and send the US into a world
depression.
Trump's negotiations with North Korea will go nowhere as long as he demands unilateral
nuclear disarmament, US military control over the peninsula and political isolation from
China.
Kim will insist on the end of sanctions, and a mutual defense treaty with China. Kim will
offer to end nuclear testing but not nuclear weapons. After Trump's reneged on the Iran deal,
Kim will recognize that agreements with the US are not trustworthy.
Conclusion
Trump's loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his
assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think
his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war
with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its
companies to be frozen out of the Iran market.
Trump's trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production
sites for US multi-nationals. He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have
links with five continents. Trump cannot dominate North Korea and force it to sacrifice its
sovereignty on the basis of empty economic promises to lift sanctions. Trump is heading for
defeats on all counts. But he may take the American people into the nuclear abyss in the
process.
Epilogue
Are Trump's threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to intimidate,
in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger 'madman'
tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable' demands or
face the worst from the President? I don't think so.
Nixon unlike Trump was not led by the nose by Israel. Nixon unlike Trump was not led by
pro-nuclear war advisers. Nixon in contrast to Trump opened the US to trade with China and
signed nuclear reduction agreements with Russia. Nixon successfully promoted peaceful
co-existence.
"Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction."
indeed they will, and sadly it well deserved after the last 20yrs off US terrorism.
the US hubris will soon meet karma, and we all know karma is a bitch..
You didn't have to be genius to see this coming. In fact, NK played Trump as
expected. Anything else would have been gross negligence by their diplomatic
negotiators. Getting Trump to speculate about a prospective Nobel (for himself) for bringing nuclear
peace to the Pacific was baiting the hook nicely.
The US is now dealing from a position of weakness. Let's see what NK can extract in terms of
keeping their weapons and gaining economic assistance in return for getting the meetings back
on track.
This theory is the opposite of what I suppose is the right explanation, the explanation also
given by prof Laslo Maracs, UVA Amsterdam, that Trump and his rich friends understand that
the USA can to longer control the world, conquering the rest of the world totally out of the
question.
The end of the British empire began before 1914, when the twe fleet standard had to lowered
to one fleet.
Obama had to do something similar, the USA capability of fighting two wars at the time was
lowered to one and half.
What half a war accomplishes we see in Syria.
In the thirties the British, some of them, knew quite well they could no longer defend their
empire, at the time this meant controlling the Meditarranean and the Far East.
Lawrence R. Pratt, 'East of Malta, West of Suez', London, 1975
The British guarantees to Poland and countries bordering on the Med lighted the fuse to the
powder keg that had been standing for a long time.
Churchill won, the British thought, and some of them think it still, WWII.
But shortly after WWII some British understood 'we won the war, but lost the peace'.
I still have the idea that Trump has no intention of losing the peace, but time will tell.
I suppose Trump just is buying time against Deep State and Netanyahu.
The fool Netanyahu is happy with having got Jerusalem, he does not see the cost in increased
hatred among Muslims, and Israel having won the Eurovision Song Festival.
Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant
bully.
To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again.
However, behind the facade of all his bravado hides a puppet of the Jewish Power Structure,
which is even more dangerous than Trump himself. "Make Zion Great Again" would be a more
apposite slogan.
Wall Street collapsing will not cause a world depression, but will reflect the very real
depression that will arise from huge disruptions to the US supply chain and energy costs and
the knock-on effect that will have on the global economy.
A strike on Iran won't by itself be enough to cripple the US economy, but the loss of a
single aircraft carrier might be enough of a pull on a thread that unravels the magical
mantle of military force that currently holds the empire together and keeps the vassal-states
in line to cause things to go pear-shaped quickly.
Nobody can accuse Donald of not being obedient executioner of tasks given by his Masters.
You don't have to be dark skinned to reside in Masters quarters, orange haired and white is
ok too..
Overall a good analysis, but as far as his support of Israel is concerned, his family
connections with the most ultra-Zionist factions should not be overlooked.
Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and
dominate the Asian and world economy.
On what basis does the author say that? Trump is smart enough to know that China is
growing as an economic and military power, not declining.
A fairly poorly (and likely hastily) written article.
Trump is under the control of Zionists just as is the U.S. gov with Zionist dual citizens in
control of every facet and has been since 1913 when the Zionists created the FED and the IRS.
Trump is like the Roman emperor Caligula and is a Trojan Horse for the Zionist agenda of a
NWO and is continuing the tradition of the U.S. gov breaking its word about everything, just
ask the native American Indians.
The nuke agreement with Iran was a sham. Iran lied about what they were doing. The agreement
had never been submitted to the Senate and so was never ratified. Our "allies" in Europe and
Asia knew that and their reaction has not been nearly as negative as the author of this
column has claimed.
I continue to admire President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi of China. WHY? .because
RESULTS matter more than opinions on internet websites, T.V., or in printed publications.
N. Korea has stopped performing ICBM or nuke tests, a less extremist regime change "coup"
took place in Saudi Arabia, financing/ weapons flows / intelligence to Syrian terrorists has
dried up with resulting collapse of ISIS, Iran is threatening to release the names of
European & American politicians who previously made millions / billions off the Iran nuke
deal if it is dropped, Harvey Weinstein, Allison Mack, and "Weiner" were untouchable before
Trump, the list just goes on and continues to get bigger.
A major reason for admiration of Putin is that the Mainstream Media (MSM) can't stop
demonizing him. So of course I'm logically led to believe that he is mostly a good guy since
the MSM has proven itself repeatedly to distort the Truth. Putin also largely ended the
oligarchs power, doubled Russian citizens income, used an tiny Russian military in Syria to
gradually reverse ISIS expansion there, improved Russia's internal manufacturing,
agricultural, mining, and technological research/ development, intellectually crushed
international debate opponents repeated using only logic and facts (You should watch the
videos!), built / rebuilt over 10 thousand churches, has patriotic Muslims (Crimea) fighting
for Russia in Syria, etc. etc.
Xi of China has pretty impressive creditials but this post is
overly long anyway.
RESULTS COUNT MORE THAN WORDS!
Of course they do this, they would be stupid if they didn't.
• Agree: CalDre
I like your frankness. Every countries is into this at different degree, with ZUS the
apex. But been leading in most tech area currently & lazy to produce any useful things,
ZUS is very unhappy that their esponage net result is negative, hence the continuous
whining.
When tide reverse with China leading in most tech, ZUS will complaint about complex patent
system as been flawed in exploitating & suppressing of weaker country innovation, juz as
it did for WTO & Globalization now.
Of course any moronic comments about only China is espionaging US IPR & rise purely due
to US FDI & Tech transfer will resonate CalDre into high chime.
Well, he is not meeting with North Korea either, since Kim didn't chicken out, and is not
that stupid as to offer his head on the plate! Bolton made sure of that.
Hastily written article cobbled by bits of public info here & there without deep
analysis.
1. Today NK declared they have indefinitely terminate all high level exchange with SK. If
Trumps insisted on another Libya & Iraq defank & ending model advocate by Bolton,
meeting with Trumps will be cancelled. Trumps needs the Korea peace credit to get his Nobel
Prize, so as to booster his coming Nov election win. Kim has baited Trumps to put him in
tight corner now, hence WH still insisting to go ahead prepare for the meeting.
If venue does changed to Beijing from Trumps' choice of Spore (Kim's cargo plane can't fly
his limousine so far, also a risk of him as Spore is US vassal), we will see Kim has K.O.
Trumps in another round. Kim will get to keep its nuke weapon until USM remove its Korea
present, clear all sanctions, with UNSC guaranteed its safety. If Trumps has the meeting
cancelled, then China can roll out its own play book as unchallenged leader in solving Korea
crisis. Either way, Trumps will lost influence to China.
2. Trade war with China has exposed ZUS deep weakness in its brinkmanship when china
retaliated with no compromise. Four most senior trade & treasury secs scrambled 10,000
miles to Beijing to seek detente, but return empty handed in 2 days with their ridiculous
demands in hubris. Still China got Trumps to waiver ZTE ruling, with Huawei declared no
longer a threat to US security.
Btw, this author has wrongly written about the $100B trade tariff, its only $50B so far.
Another additional $100B is only a empty threat ZUS dare not release to avoid China
retaliation.
3. JCPOA cancelling is godsend move.
First, EU with Germany & France having huge investments in Iran is crying loud that they
have to be free from been ZUS vassal. If they caved in to ZUS sanction threat, then EU bosses – Macron & Merkel will
face revolt from Europe business sector. China & Russia will be happy to pick up whatever
investments in fire sales.
If EU decided to rebel & chart its own destiny with a little spine, then ZUS has lost
its tight clutch over EU. EU has juz announced to trade Iran oil in Euro, hasten
de-dollarization. The geopolitical game is changing tide. In either way of EU decision, China
& Russia win.
Now Iran will continue to enjoy free trades with everyone except ZUS that it dislike most,
& win moral high ground in international standing by keeping to JCPOA.
ZUS has juz ordered Trumps to shoot its own foot. It pay the high price of losing every
credibility in international agreement, forced EU into seeking independency, have EU trade in
Euro, with Iran, China & Russia all smiling.
Of course, but I just wanted to make a point not write a book or even a PhD thesis. thanks
for the supplementary material though. Your comments about oil are spot on as you know. The wars were about smashing some real
competition.
Somebody has to shovel the BS occasionally, to keep the smell down here. I guess it's my
turn today, sigh.
The nuke agreement with Iran was a sham. Iran lied about what they were doing.
Then the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and many of the major European
countries must also be lying when they say that Iran is fully complying with the JCPOA.
The agreement had never been submitted to the Senate and so was never ratified.
The United Nations Security Council endorsed the JCPOA; see UNSC resolution 2231.
According to the UN treaty, UNSC resolutions are automatically the law of the land,
even in the USA -- no Senate ratification needed.
Have you ever made a comment that was other than your mere and clearly biased opinion? Try
it sometime; it would be interesting to see what evidence you provide to support such
transparently erroneous ideas.
Trump's only strategy is to do what Israel orders him to do. The Neocon Jews and their friends including the Jew In Chief of
the White House Jared Kushner are running the show. You can easily see this in ... Niki Haley's presentation before the UN including
walking out before the Palestinian Rep had a chance to speak.
Trump is up to his arms in shady deals with Jewish financiers of his properties and they
will get what they want from him politically. It's Israel against the world and the US is
nothing more than their war whore. More people will die for this strategy that comes from
formerly Tel Aviv and now from the Magic Jewish Capital called Jerusalem.
New York City's Hip Hop station Hot 97's morning show, "Ebro in the Morning," dedicated an
entire segment to yesterday's demonstration in Gaza where the two blasted Israel and
President Donald Trump http://pic.twitter.com/43XIqhKFWZ
-- Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) May 15, 2018
Hadid posted screen shots of Al Jazeera's coverage alongside an image of the Nakba with text
written by a relative,
"Almost One Million Palestinians were violently forced out of their country and never allowed
back to Palestine. The Hadid family was amongst them and they fled in fear to Syria where
they became refugees."
Why are these important? Because they have millions of followers on social media .because
their audience and followers are the coming voter and leadership force .for better or worse
..and for Israel its the 'worse'.
Gigi Hadid for instance has 9 million followers on twitter.
Giuliani: Mueller's team told Trump's lawyers they can't indict a president
This true. BUT ..'if' any criminal wrong doing by Trump before he was president is revealed in the
course of the Russia investigation he can be indicted for that after he is out of office. IN ADDITION ..'if' any criminal wrong doing is revealed in Trump's businesses then any
persons involved in it within his businesses including his sons or daughter can be indicted. And now, as they have no presidential protection.
imo .this is what Trump is most afraid of ..some criminal business like money laundering
being exposed. not that Mueller will find Russian election collusion.
"Speaking to soon-to-be graduates of the Virginia Military Institute on Wednesday,
Tillerson dropped this truth bomb:
"If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative
realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway
to relinquishing our freedom."
Woof.
..
Why is this important? Because the graduating class of VMI selects its speakers so that
tells you where the minds of the elite military schools are on Trumpism.
Working-class white people may claim to be against identity politics, but they actually
crave identity politics.
I think they probably see it more of a "if you can't beat them, join them" scenario. They
see the way the wind is blowing and decide if they want representation, they have to play the
game, even if they don't really like the rules.
They know enough about the EU to know that it isn't one of their patrons and sponsors.
They also know that Westminster have been systematically misrepresenting the EU for their own
purposes for decades, and they can use the same approach.
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Not a fool and I don't hate anyone at 55 I have 1.2M in investments, I make 165k a year and
pay 40k+ a year in taxes. I to come across people who live off of we everyday and expect to
free load. I am not a blowhard just an engineer who pays for sloth.
I've met many fools like you in my over 50 years on the planet, blowhards parading their
ignorance as a badge of pride, thinking that their hatred of anyone not exactly like them is
normal, mistaking what some cretin says on the far right radio for fact.
You people would be comical if not for the toxicity that your stupidity engenders.
Al Jazeera tries to do a better job, at least providing a spectrum of opinion and a lot of
depth in quite a few issues, something most other networks fail to do these days.
Don't fall into the associated trap either, of the false equation between STATED and ACTUAL
goals.
Fox and Hunt are fully aware that to actually admit their actual goal, would be (probably)
just about the only thing which would provoke an electoral backlash which would sweep the
Conservatives from office. The NHS is proverbially "the nearest thing the English have, to a
religion" and is a profoundly dangerous subject for debate.
Fox and Hunt may be weaving an incomprehensible web of sophistry and misdirection, but no
part of it is accidental.
Please, please don't make the unfounded assumption that people like Fox, Johnson, Cameron et
al are as stupid as they sometimes appear.
Fox and Hunt, in particular, know exactly what they are engaged in - a hard-right coup
designed to destroy government control over the NHS and route its enormous cash flows into
the pockets of their private, mostly American sponsors. It isn't necessary to look far, to
discover their connections and patronage from this source.
Johnson is consumed by ambition, as was Cameron before him; like Cameron, he makes much of
his self-presumed fitness for the role, whilst producing no supporting evidence of any
description.
Brexit, as defined by its advocates, CANNOT be discussed precisely because no rational
debate exists. It hinges upon the Conservative Party's only fear, that of disunity leading to
Opposition. They see that Labour are 50-odd seats short of a majority, and that's ALL they
see.
What in God's green world are you talking about? Did you read that before pressing "Post"?
It's obvious that you have no knowledge whatsoever of the subject.
The "race riots" of the 1940s and 1950s were essentially about employment protection (the
first, regarding the importation of Yemeni seamen into the North-East of England). The mostly
Pakistani influx into the North-West of England was an attempt to cut labour costs and prop
up a dying, obsolete industry, mortally wounded by the loss of its business model in the
aftermath of Empire; an industry whose very bricks and mortar are long since gone, but the
imported labour and their descendants remain... the influx of Caribbean labour into London
and the South-East was focussed around the railways and Underground, to bolster the local
labour force which had little interest in dead-end shift-work jobs in the last days of steam
traction and the increasingly run-down Underground.
Labour, in those days, was strongly anti-immigration precisely because it saw no value in
it, to their unionised, heavy-industry voter base.
Regarding the ideological, anti-British, anti-democratic nature of Labour's conversion to
mass immigration, you need only read the writings and speeches of prominent figures of the
day such as Roy Hattersley and Harriet Harman, who say exactly this, quite clearly and in
considerable detail. Their ideological heirs, figures like Diane Abbot (who is stridently
anti-white and anti-British), Andrew Neather and Hazel Blears, can speak for themselves.
I was recently struck by this part of the Guardian obituary of Lady Farrington of Ribbleton:
' she possessed the important defining characteristic that, above others, wins admiration
across all the red leather benches in the House of Lords: she knew what she was talking
about'
Too often these days we are governed by people who don't know what they are talking about.
Never has this been truer than the likes of Fox, Davis, Johnson, and other Brexiteers.
But this doesn't seem to matter much anymore. At times it seems that anyone can make
generised assertions about something, without having to back them up with evidence, and then
wave away questions about their veracity.
Opinion now trumps evidence regularly, even on the BBC where Brexit ideology is often now
given a free pass. The problem for those of us who value expertise is that with the likes of
Trump, and some EU Leavers, we are up against a bigotry which is evangelical in nature. A
gospel that cannot be questioned, a creed that allows no other thinking.
The best you can do is complain about "this?" This WHAT? Try a noun. You're being an
embarrassment to troglodytes everywhere. Don't just point and leap up and down. Your
forefathers died in bringing you a language. Be an expressive hominid and name the thing that
hurts.
It seems at the moment the Guardian also suffers from a glut of experts without expertise.
Not a day goes by that my jaw doesn't drop at some inane claim made by what seems to be a
retinue of contributors who have neither good writing skills nor a particularly wide look on
things. An example today: "Unlike Hillary Clinton, I never wanted to be someone's wife". How
extraordinary. Who says she ever 'wanted to be someone's wife'? Maybe she fell in love with
someone all those years ago and they decided to get married? Who knows. But sweeping
statements like that do not endear you to quite a few of your once very loyal readers. It's
annoying.
I think this posits an overriding explanation for people's actions that doesn't exist. Even
the idea that immigration is a new liberal plot. Take the wind rush generation of immigrants
while there was a Tory government at the time I think the idea this was an attempt to
undermine white working class gains is provably nonsensical
The problem with this article, and the numerous other similar pieces which appear in the
various editions of the Guardian on a "regular-and-often" basis, is that it completely avoids
a very basic point, because it has no answer to it.
It is this.
The white British (and by extension, Western) populations never wanted mass immigration
because they knew from the outset, that its purpose was to undermine the social and political
gains they had wrested from the political and financial elite after 1945. They cared not at
all for the fratricidal conflicts between alien religions and cultures, of which they knew
little and regarded what they did know as unacceptable.
The US achieved a huge economic boom without it. Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the
USA were popular destinations for the British population whose goal and mantra was "no return
to the thirties" and who emigrated in large numbers.
White semi-skilled and unskilled (and increasingly, lower middle class) populations
everywhere reject, and have always rejected third world mass immigration (and more recently,
in some areas, mass emigration from the former Soviet Union) for the simple, and sufficient
reason that they have no possible reason or incentive to support or embrace it. It offers
them nothing, and its impact on their lives is wholly negative in practical terms - which is
how a social group which lives with limited or no margins between income and outgoings,
necessarily
perceives life.
Identity politics has no roots amongst them, because they correctly perceive that whatever
answer it might produce, there is no possible outcome in which the preferred answer will be a
semi-skilled, white family man. They inevitably pick up a certain level of the constant blare
of "racist bigot, homophobe, Islsmophobia" from its sheer inescapability, but they aren't
COMPLETELY stupid.
Yet here is the even more unexplainable part of this sorry episode that amounts to the Deep
State waging the Donald. The remaining rebels capitulated on Sunday and the government re-upped
the evacuation deal. That is, the remnants of Jaish al-Islam are now all dead or have boarded
busses--along with their families---and are already in Idlib province.
That's right. There is no opposition left in Douma and it has been liberated by the Syrian
army, including release of the 3,200 pro-government hostages who had been paraded around the
town in cages by the Saudi Arabia funded warriors of Islam who had terrorized it.
According to the Syrian government, no traces of chemicals or even bodies have been found.
They could be lying, of course, but with the OPCW investigators on the way to Douma who in
their right mind would not wait for an assessment of what actually happened last Saturday?
That is, if you are not caught up in the anti-Russian hysteria that has engulfed official
Washington and the mainstream media. Indeed, the Syrian government has now even welcomed the
international community to come to Douma, where the Russians claim there is absolutely nothing
to see:
Speaking with EuroNews, Russia's ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizov, said "Russian
military specialists have visited this region, walked on those streets, entered those houses,
talked to local doctors and visited the only functioning hospital in Douma, including its
basement where reportedly the mountains of corpses pile up. There was not a single corpse and
even not a single person who came in for treatment after the attack."
"But we've seen them on the video!" responds EuroNews correspondent Andrei Beketov.
"There was no chemical attack in Douma, pure and simple," responds Chizov. "We've seen
another staged event. There are personnel, specifically trained - and you can guess by whom -
amongst the so-called White Helmets, who were already caught in the act with staged
videos."
In short, if they are lying, it would not be hard to ascertain. Presumably, the Donald could
even send Jared Kushner--flack jacket and all---to investigate what actually happened at
Douma.
Alas, the Donald has apparently opted for war instead in a desperate maneuver to keep the
Deep State at bay.
Either way, we think he's about done, and in Part 2 we will explore why what's about to
happen next should be known to the history books, if there are any, as "Mueller's War".
"... The UK is clearly past the point where it could undo Brexit . There was pretty much no way to back out of Brexit, given the ferocious support for it in the tabloids versus the widespread view that a second referendum that showed that opinion had changed was a political necessity for a reversal. Pundits and politicians were cautious about even voicing the idea. ..."
"... The UK still faces high odds of significant dislocations as of Brexit date . All sorts of agreements to which the UK is a party via the EU cease to be operative once the UK become a "third country". These other countries have every reason to take advantage of the UK's week and administratively overextended position. Moreover, these countries can't entertain even discussing interim trade arrangements (new trade deals take years) until they have at least a high concept idea of what the "future relationship" with the EU will look like. Even though it looks likely to be a Canada-type deal, no one wants to waste time negotiating until that is firmed up. ..."
"... On the World Service this morning, the BBC reported from the "cultural front line against Putin". A playwright (perhaps a member of playwrights against Putin) was given half an hour from 5 am to witter on. This is half an hour more than what Brexit will get on the airwaves today. ..."
"... I think the key thing that is driving the politics for the moment is that May has shown an absolute determination to hold on to power at any cost, and she realises that having a transition agreement is central to this. ..."
"... I think you are right that the main political priority now in London is preserving May in her position. ..."
A
reader was kind enough to ask for a Brexit update. I hadn't provided one because truth be told,
the UK press has gone quiet as the Government knuckled under in the last round of
negotiations.
It is a mystery as to why the hard core Brexit faction and the true power brokers, the press
barons, have gone quiet after having made such a spectacle of their incompetence and refusal to
compromise. Do they not understand what is happening? Has someone done a whip count and
realized they didn't have the votes if they tried forcing a crisis, and that the result would
probably be a Labour government, a fate they feared far more than a disorderly Brexit?
As we've pointed out repeatedly, the EU has the vastly stronger negotiating position. The UK
could stomp and huff and keep demanding its super special cherry picked special cake all it
wanted to. That was a fast track to a crash-out Brexit. But it seems out of character for the
Glorious Brexit true believers to sober up suddenly.
Some observations:
The transition deal is the much-decried "vassal state ". As we and others pointed out, the
only transition arrangement feasible was a standstill with respect to the UK's legal
arrangements with the EU, save at most some comparatively minor concessions on pet issues. The
UK will remain subject to the authority of the ECJ. The UK will continue to pay into the EU
budget. As we'd predicted, the transition period will go only until the end of 2020.
The UK couldn't even get a break on the Common Fisheries Policy.
From the Guardian :
For [fisherman Tony] Delahunty's entire career, a lopsided system of quotas has granted up
to 84% of the rights to fish some local species, such as English Channel cod, to the French,
and left as little as 9% to British boats. Add on a new system that bans fishermen from
throwing away unwanted catch and it becomes almost impossible to haul in a net of mixed fish
without quickly exhausting more limited quotas of "choke" species such as cod .
Leaving the EU was meant to change all that .Instead, growing numbers of British fishermen
feel they have been part of a bait-and-switch exercise – a shiny lure used to help reel
in a gullible public. Despite only recently promising full fisheries independence as soon as
Brexit day on 29 March 2019, the UK government this week capitulated to Brussels' demand for it
to remain part of the common fisheries system until at least 2021, when a transition phase is
due to end. Industry lobbyists fear that further cave-ins are now inevitable in the long run as
the EU insists on continued access to British waters as the price of a wider post-Brexit trade
deal.
The one place where the UK did get a win of sorts was on citizen's rights, where the
transition deal did not make commitments, much to the consternation of both EU27 and UK
nationals. Curiously, the draft approved by the EU27 last week dropped the section that had
discussed citizens' rights. From
the Express :
Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Angelino Alfano,
demands EU citizens' rights be protected after Brexit .
The comments from Italy's foreign minister come after the draft Brexit agreement struck
between Britain and the EU on Monday was missing "Article 32", which in previous drafts
regulated the free movement of British citizens living in Europe after Brexit.
The entire article was missing from the document, which goes straight from Article 31 to
Article 33.
MEPs from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru have
written to Brexit Secretary David Davis for clarification about the missing article, while
citizens' group British in Europe said the document failed to provide them with "legal
certainty".
A copy of the letter sent to Mr Davis seen by the Independent said: "As UK MEPs we are
deeply worried about what will happen to British citizens living in EU27 member states once
we leave the EU.
This issue has apparently been pushed back to the April round of talks. I have not focused
on the possible points of contention here. However, bear in mind that EU citizens could sue if
they deem the eventual deal to be too unfavorable. Recall that during the 2015 Greece-Troika
negotiations, some parties were advocating that Greece leave the Eurozone. A counterargument
was that Greek citizens would be able to sue the Greek government for their loss of EU
rights.
The UK is backing into having to accept a sea border as the solution for Ireland. As many
have pointed out, there's no other remedy to the various commitments the UK has already made
with respect to Ireland, as unpalatable as that solution is to the Unionists and hard core
Brexiters. The UK has not put any solutions on the table as the EU keeps working on the
"default" option, which was included in the Joint Agreement of December. The DUP sabre-rattled
then but was not willing to blow up the negotiations then. It will be even harder for them to
derail a deal now when the result would be a chaotic Brexit.
The UK is still trying to escape what appears to be the inevitable outcome. The press of the
last 24 hours reports that the UK won't swallow the "backstop" plan that the EU has been
refining, even though it accepts the proposition that the
agreement needs to have that feature . The UK is back to trying to revive one of its barmy
ideas that managed to find its way into the Joint Agreement, that of a new super special
customs arrangement.
Politico gives an outline below. This is a non-starter simply because the EU will never
accept any arrangement where goods can get into the EU without there being full compliance with
EU rules, and that includes having them subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ and the various
relevant Brussels supervisory bodies. Without even hearing further details, the UK's barmy
"alignment" notions means that the UK would somehow have a say in these legal and regulatory
processes. This cheeky plan would give the UK better rights than any EU27 member. From
Politico :
The key issues for debate, according to one senior U.K. official, is how the two sides can
deliver "full alignment" and what the territorial scope of that commitment will be -- the U.K.
or Northern Ireland.
The starting point of the U.K.'s position will be that "full alignment" should apply to
goods and a limited number of services sectors, one U.K. official said.
On the customs issue, the proposal that Northern Ireland is subsumed into the EU's customs
territory is a non-starter with London
The alternative would be based on one of the two customs arrangements set out by the
government in August last year and reaffirmed by May in her Mansion House speech. They are
either a customs partnership -- known as the "hybrid" model internally -- or the "highly
streamlined customs arrangement" known by officials as "max-fac" or maximum facilitation.
The hybrid model would mean the U.K. continuing to police its border as if it were the
EU's customs border, but then tracking imports to apply different tariffs depending on which
market they end up in -- U.K. or EU. Under this scenario, because Northern Ireland and the
Republic of Ireland would share an external EU customs border, as they do now, it would
remove the need for checks on the land border between the two.
The complexity and unprecedented nature of this solution has led to accusations from the
Brussels side that it amounts to "magical thinking."
The "max-fac" model is simpler conceptually but would represent a huge logistical effort
for U.K. customs authorities. It would involve the use of technological and legal measures
such as electronic pre-notification of goods crossing the border and a "trusted trader"
status for exporters and importers, to make customs checks as efficient as possible.
While the U.K. will present both customs arrangements as possible ways of solving this
aspect of the Irish border problem, one senior official said that the "hybrid" model was
emerging as the preferred option in London.
The UK is already having trouble getting its customs IT upgrade done on time, which happens
to be right before Brexit. As we wrote early on, even if the new programs are in place, they
won't be able to handle the increased transactions volume resulting from of being outside the
EU, and I haven't seen good figures as to what the impact would be of the UK becoming a third
country but having its transition deal in place. In other words, even if the "mac-fac" scheme
were acceptable to the EU (unlikely), the UK looks unable to pull off getting the needed
infrastructure in place. Even for competent shops, large IT projects have a high failure rate.
And customs isn't looking like a high capability IT player right now.
So the play for the EU is to let the UK continue to flail about and deliver Ireland
"solutions" that are dead on arrival because they violate clearly and consistently stated EU
red lines. The UK will then in say September be faced with a Brexit deal that is done save
Ireland, and it then have to choose between capitulating (it's hard to come up with any way to
improve the optics, but we do have a few months for creative ideas) or plunging into a chaotic
Brexit.
6.The approach outlined below reflects the level of rights and obligations compatible with
the positions stated by the UK
7. In this context, the European Council reiterates in particular that any agreement with
the United Kingdom will have to be based on a balance of rights and obligations, and ensure a
level playing field. A non-member of the Union, that does not live up to the same obligations
as a member, cannot have the same rights and enjoy the same benefits as a member.
The European Council recalls that the four freedoms are indivisible and that there can be
no "cherry picking" through participation in the Single Market based on a sector-by-sector
approach, which would undermine the integrity and proper functioning of the Single
Market.
The European Council further reiterates that the Union will preserve its autonomy as
regards its decision-making, which excludes participation of the United Kingdom as a
third-country in the Union Institutions and participation in the decision-making of the Union
bodies, offices and agencies. The role of the Court of Justice of the European Union will
also be fully respected.
8. As regards the core of the economic relationship, the European Council confirms its
readiness to initiate work towards a balanced, ambitious and wide-ranging free trade
agreement (FTA) insofar as there are sufficient guarantees for a level playing field. This
agreement will be finalised and concluded once the UK is no longer a Member State.
The EU also reaffirmed the obvious, "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."
The EU nevertheless has relented in its negotiating tactics . The EU's initial approach was
to put the most contentious issues up front: the exit tab, Ireland, freedom of movement. You
will notice it has achieved closure only only one of those issues where the EU's initial
position had been that they had to be concluded before the two sides would discuss "the future
relationship," as in trade. This is the opposite of the approach that professional negotiators
use, that of starting with the least contentious issues first to establish a working
relationship between both sides and create a sense of momentum, and then tackling the difficult
questions later. The EU has now allowed the UK to defer resolving the messy issue of Ireland
twice, and it is not clear if any progress has been made on the citizens' rights matter.
The UK is clearly past the point where it could undo Brexit . There was pretty much no way
to back out of Brexit, given the ferocious support for it in the tabloids versus the widespread
view that a second referendum that showed that opinion had changed was a political necessity
for a reversal. Pundits and politicians were cautious about even voicing the idea.
As we've pointed out, coming up with the wording of the referendum question took six months.
In the snap elections last year, the Lib Dems set forth the most compact timeline possible for
a Brexit referendum redo which presupposed that the phrasing had been settled. That was eight
months. And you'd have to have a Parliamentary approval process before and a vote afterwards
(Parliament is sovereign; a referendum in and of itself is not sufficient to change
course).
Spain has been making noises about Gibraltar but they aren't likely to mean much . I could
be proven wrong, but I don't see Spain as able to block a Brexit deal. Article 50 says that
only a "qualified majority" vote is required to approve a Brexit agreement. Spain as a lone
holdout couldn't keep a deal from being approved. And I don't see who would join Spain over the
issue of Gibraltar. In keeping, Spain joined with the rest of the EU27 in approving the latest
set of texts.
The UK still faces high odds of significant dislocations as of Brexit date . All sorts of
agreements to which the UK is a party via the EU cease to be operative once the UK become a
"third country". These other countries have every reason to take advantage of the UK's week and
administratively overextended position. Moreover, these countries can't entertain even
discussing interim trade arrangements (new trade deals take years) until they have at least a
high concept idea of what the "future relationship" with the EU will look like. Even though it
looks likely to be a Canada-type deal, no one wants to waste time negotiating until that is
firmed up.
May has lasted in office longer than many pundits predicted she would because, weak as her
grip on power may have been since she lost her parliamentary majority last year, she has
timed her surrenders cleverly.
It looks chaotic and undignified, but the prime minister has hunkered down and let pro-
and anti-Brexit factions in her party shout the odds in the media day and night, squabble
publicly about acceptable terms for a deal, leak against each other and publish Sunday
newspaper columns challenging her authority.
Then in the few days before a European summit deadline for the next phase of a deal, she
has rammed the only position acceptable to Brussels through her Cabinet and effectively
called the hard Brexiteers' bluff.
But what kind of leader marches her country into at worst an abyss and at best a future of
lower prosperity, less clout, and no meaningful increase in autonomy? Like it or not, the UK is
a small open economy, and its leaders, drunk on Imperial nostalgia, still can's stomach the
idea that the UK did better by flexing its muscle within the EU that it can ever do solo.
I'm curious as to the ramifications of the Northern Ireland sea border. Is reunification
possible with the ROI, given that the Unionists have been completely castrated?
I'm a Californian so am not one that is tuned into the history.
Theoretically, there is no fundamental problem with a NI sea border and NI remaining
within the UK. Northern Ireland already has its own Assembly and its own laws (the Assembly
is suspended at the moment), so it can, if the EU agreed, stay within the EU (albeit without
a separate vote or voice at the table). There are precedents for this, such as the
dependant territories of France . It would be constitutionally messy, but if authorized
by Parliament in London and in the EU itself, it would likely be legally watertight so far as
I am aware.
Hardline Unionists oppose this partly because they are ideologically opposed to the EU
anyway (although its highly likely many of their constituents don't agree), but also because
they see this as a 'thin end of the wedge' leading to a United Ireland. More thoughtful
Unionists realise that a sort of 'foot in both camps' approach might actually be an economic
boon to Northern Ireland – it could attract a lot of investment from companies wishing
easy access to both the internal UK market and Europe.
"The UK press has gone quiet as the Government knuckled under in the last round of
negotiations." The MSM, corporate or government (BBC and Channel 4), are under orders to go
quiet. In any case, it's easier and more fun to cover the anti-semites and anti-transgender
whatever in the Labour Party, Trump's extra-marital goings-on and whatever dastardly plot
Putin has come up with.
On my 'phone's news feed yesterday and today, the Corbyn's anti-Semitism is not shifting
from the top line. The only change is from where the latest article is sourced.
On the World Service this morning, the BBC reported from the "cultural front line against
Putin". A playwright (perhaps a member of playwrights against Putin) was given half an hour
from 5 am to witter on. This is half an hour more than what Brexit will get on the airwaves
today.
How are things playing out locally, Buckinghamshire in my case? The economy is slowing
down. More shops are closing. Some IT contractors report contracts not being renewed and
having to look for business outside the UK. East Europeans working in farming, care and
social services have been replaced in many, but not all, cases by immigrants from south Asia.
An cabbie and restaurateur report the worst festive season and first quarter of the year for
many, many years.
At Doncaster races last Saturday, the opening day of the flat season, some bookies were
offering odds of Tory victory in 2022, if not an earlier khaki one. It seems that May is a
survivor and Corbyn's Labour has peaked. All very depressing.
I think the key thing that is driving the politics for the moment is that May has shown an
absolute determination to hold on to power at any cost, and she realises that having a
transition agreement is central to this. I've also been puzzling over the relative
acquiescence of the hard Brexiteers – I think they've been told by their paymasters
that accepting a lousy transitional deal is the key to a 'clean' and firm Brexit. I believe
the phrase Gove was reported as using was that they should 'keep their eye on the prize'. I
think, as Yves says, the Tory establishment fears a move against May will precipitate a
Corbyn government, so they see it as a strategic necessity to keep her in position, and
postpone the main Brexit fallout for later.
Of lesser importance, but also I think a relevant consideration given the strong support
given by Merkel, Barnier and Tusk to the Irish PM, Varadkar, is that he is rumoured to be
planning a snap election in the autumn. His stance on Brexit has proven popular and he sees
the time as ripe to go for an overall majority (he is currently leading a minority
government). He is very much an EU establishment favourite, so I don't doubt that some of the
motivation is to help his domestic politics by giving him what are perceived as 'wins' over
Brexit.
If this is the case, then barring an unexpected event, I think there will be a strong
political push on both sides to sign off a transition deal which would be both a complete
surrender by the UK, but with sufficient spin by a supportively dim witted UK press will
allow her to push the whole Brexit issue politically to one side for a year or two. The
Tories will be hoping that this can be sold to the public as a success for long enough for
them to work out how to stop Corbyn.
I'm taking the liberty of re-posting a comment I made yesterday on one of the links
– a Richard North piece – to which none of the usual Brexit scholars responded
(Sunday .). It bears very much on this discussion and echoes a number of points made
above.
"Richard North's Brexit article is well informed as one would expect, but I think that, like
a lot of other commentators, he's missing something. May is a post-modern politician, ie
there is no particular link between what she says and does, and her understanding of its
impact on the real world. Only her words and actions actually count, and, whether it's
threatening Russia or threatening Brussels, real-world consequences don't form part of the
calculation, insofar as they actually exist. Her only concern (and in this she is indeed
post-modernist) is with how she is perceived by voters and the media, and as a consequence
whether she can hang onto her job. I think May has decided that she will have an agreement at
any cost, no matter if she has to surrender on every single issue, and throw Northern Ireland
to the wolves. She wants to be seen as the Prime Minister who got us "out of Europe," just as
Ted Heath got us in. The content of the final deal is secondary: not that she wouldn't prefer
to please the City and the Brexit ultras if she could, but if there's a choice she will
sacrifice them for a picture of her shaking hands with Barnier and waving the Union Jack with
the other hand. The resulting chaos can then be blamed on a treacherous Europe. Indeed, if
May can stick it out until next year, I think she'll keep her job. What a thought." I think
many of the hardline Brexiters have the same idea – the political prize is exiting the
EU: the damage is a secondary consideration. Any deal, no matter how humiliating, can be spun
in the end as a triumph because we will have broken the shackles of Brussels.
I'd add that the EU's emphasis on the priority to give to NI was an each-way bet, as I argued
at the time. Either the Tory government collapsed, and something more reasonable took its
place, or May gave way on everything else, in the hope of surviving and somehow finding a NI
solution later. This has indeed proved to be the case.
Finally, I wouldn't put too much store by the imperial nostalgia argument, not least because
few Brexiters were even alive then. The real nostalgia is for an independent Britain capable
of playing a role on the world stage, perhaps at the head of a coalition of likeminded
nations. The idea of a Commonwealth Free Trade area, for example, was raised in the 1975 EU
referendum debate, and has its ultimate origins in the ideas of Mill and others in the 19th
century for a kind of British superstate, incorporating Australia, New Zealand, Canada and
perhaps South Africa. Its ghost still walks.
Finally, let's not get too carried away with the small size of the British economy. It's the
fifth or sixth largest economy in the world, depending on how you calculate it, ahead of
Russia, India, Italy and Spain.
I think you are right that the main political priority now in London is preserving May in
her position. Whether or not she does a good deal (or any other good policy work) has become
irrelevant. Its all about survival, and keeping Corbyn at bay.
Who are the 'wolves' to whom NI may be thrown?
More interesting, who are the strange Tory Brexiteers, not exactly in sync with the needs and
expectations of the City of London, big business in Britain, etc? The people for whom an
imperial past is still a ghost that walks? A possible answer here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n05/william-davies/what-are-they-after
Thank you David. I agree with your definition of the present Brexit set-up and May herself
as post-modernist . The same could be said even more so about Trump . They have in their very
different ways taken politics to a place beyond policies and even identities ( it's most
recent iteration ) to this very new place where the public ( translation : American people )
simply roll over and get out of bed the next day to whatever is new and move on whether it be
bombing in Syria, or Trump and a prostitute . I think the technology of the smart phone and
everything that emanates from it is the handmaiden to this change . The speed of daily life
as orchestrated by the smart phone has brought us all , whether we like it or not, to this
post-modern , everything is a cultural construct , position which is possibly the most
terrifying reality the West has ever had to face and yet it barely registers .
On your last point – it used to be larger. It would have been inconcievable even 50
years ago that the UK's economy could be compared with Spain's.
The point being that the correlation of physical closeness and trade is about as close as
you get in economics to a natural law. The UK is now spurning (wilfully limiting its access
to) the closest and the richest markets it has. That will have impact – and no amount
of Brexiter's wishful thinking will replace it – if for nothing else, the likelyhood of
the UK SMEs suddenly wanting to export to China/India/NZ/whatever is not going to grow with
Brexit. Those who wanted and could, already do. The other don't want and are unlikely to want
to in a new world.
Vlade, 50 years ago Africa still started at the Pyrenées, as the saying was in
France. It is not that the UK has shrunk so much as that Spain has dramatically improved its
position. So, unhelpful comparison. How the UK fared over those 50 years relative to, say,
France and Germany or even Italy, would be more instructive.
In relation to France it stayed roughly the same. But actually the share of British GDP to
world GDP is much smaller and international specialisation and globalisation is much
increased. For the question if the UK can act as a "big" economy in relation to economic
policy the latter is more important.
You watch. About the same time that the British wake to find that the elites have sold
them down the river through devastating incompetence and sheer bloodymindedness, they will
find that in the transition to Brexit that the government would have voted themselves all
sorts of laws that will give them authoritarian powers. And then it will be too late.
It won't matter how bad May is at that point and she might just resign and let somebody else
deal with all the fallout over the new regulations at which time she will be kicked upstairs
to the House of Lords. Isn't the way that it works in practice? Don't make any preparations,
tell the people that they have got it all organized, then when it all hits they start pumping
out emergency orders and the like.
It all seems quite curious does it not (curiouser and curiouser?). I wonder if I smell a
rat? Forgive me; I have a suspicious nature. I was thinking partly of the role of Gove, which
prompted some idle musings.
Gove is reportedly telling people who support Brexit to keep their eyes on the prize, by
which he is said to mean letting the clock run down to 29 March 2019 at which time the UK is
officially out of the EU. When I read Gove, I tend to think Murdoch, who pulls Gove's
strings. Yves quite rightly asks what the press barons are about; that is generally worth
knowing when it comes to UK politics. Is Murdoch playing a longer game?
The argument goes that once the UK is out of the EU it will be much harder to get support
for it to go back in again as the UK would only be allowed back in without the special
privileges it had negotiated for itself over the decades : opt out from Euro, Schengen,
various justice issues, the budget rebate. Is this determining Murdoch's approach at the
moment – ensure that the UK is outside the EU at almost any cost before proceeding to
the next stage, when Ministers will be largely unable to call Brussels in to help them
against him and his allies?
Why might Murdoch want to do that? There is talk that May will be ditched once she does a
deal. If it is seen as a bad deal then she becomes the scapegoat (and Gove steps in to her
shoes?). Post March 2019, it might then be the plan to seek to undercut the effect of any
deal struck now by, for example, pulling out of the Good Friday Agreement if that proves to
be an obstacle to the trade deals Fox is so keen to sign (is he expecting kickbacks?). At
that point the UK might declare that with the demise of the GFA it was no longer constrained
by the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement with regards to the Irish Border and with one leap
the UK would be free. I have seen cynics suggest that the men of violence in Northern Ireland
might be encouraged to go on a bit if a spree to justify claims that the GFA had failed.
I hope I am wrong but as I said I have a suspicious nature and, having watched more of
Murdoch's machinations than I have ever wished, know that he is very capable of playing a
long game.
I'm loath to indulge in conspiracy theorising, but when it comes to Brexit (and Northern
Ireland) conspiracies are legion and real.
I'm sure in any spiders web Murdoch will be found in the middle of it, and there is
certainly something up, thats the only explanation for the low key response of the hard
Brexiters. It wouldn't surprise me if he has realised that a tanking UK economy isn't exactly
good for his investments (its also worth noting that it seems to have belatedly been realised
by the UK media economy that many of them will have to up sticks to Europe if they are to
keep broadcasting rights).
My guess is that they 'have a plan' which will involve Gove playing middle man, but
actually working for a decisive Brexit doing his duty for the country at some stage to step
into Mays shoes. All sorts of behind the scenes promises (mostly jobs, no doubt) have
probably been made. I suspect a centre piece of it would be a dramatic repudiation of any
deal, supposedly on the UK's terms.
As for Northern Ireland, anything is possible. Several of the
Loyalist terrorist groups have been shown over the years to be little more than puppets
of the security forces, they will do what they are told. And there have long been rumours
that at least one of the fringe Republican groups is so completely infiltrated that they are
similarly under control. There have been nearly 50 years of shady assassinations and bombings
in NI and the Republic which have the fingerprints of intelligence services, so quite
literally, I could believe almost anything could happen if it was in their interest. People
who c ould
maintain a boys home as the centre of a paedophile ring for political purposes are
capable of almost anything.
Oh yes, this is a big part of the history of "the troubles". So much of what went on in
that conflict was beneficial to the U.K. government. Budget, manpower, little oversight,
draconian powers and a lot more besides was enabled merely because of the paramilitary
activities. It's not hard to look for well documented examples -- such as the mass
warrantless surveillance of all U.K.- Republic telecommunications http://www.lamont.me.uk/capenhurst/original.html
by the U.K. security services.
And, there's more, a lot of provisional activity was just your common or garden organised
crime -- protection rackets, kidnapping and bribery.
To say that the troubles were merely to do with republicanism and unionism is like saying
US Civil War was only about racism and ignoring the politics and the economics.
I think that we should remember how much the anti-EU fraternity in politics and the media
have had a symbiotic, if not downright parasitic, relationship with the EU itself. Much of
their commerce depended on us being members, and so being able to strike poses and make cheap
cracks about Europe and Brussels. I have a feeling that reality is starting to dawn, and they
are standing to understand that politics will be a great deal more complicated, and probably
nastier, after Brexit than even it is now.They'll have to find something else to complain
about for easy applause instead of just bashing Brussels.
As for conspiracy theories, well I have the same skepticism about them of most people who've
worked in government, and I happen to have been reasonably close to a number of people who
had to deal with these issues in the 1970s and 1980s. There was certainly complicity in some
cases, and some of the actors involved broke the rules badly , but it's a stretch from that
to talk of conspiracies. With what objective? And what objective would such conspiracies have
today, and how could they be implemented? The universal refrain among everyone I knew
involved in the security forces at the time was Get Us Out of Here.
It'll put a cat amongst the pigeons and no mistake. If I may put in a word from the
deplorables who voted Brexit, there's a lot which -- for both the UK and the EU -- was made a
whole lot easier because a problem issue could simply be labelled as the British complaining
and not understanding The Project.
Take energy. It was probably energy supply as much as Greece and the Ukraine which tipped
me over into Brexit. At the behest of the U.K., the European energy industry became, at least
in theory, a pan-continental endeavour free from national restrictive practices. Well, a fat
lot of good that turned out to be. As exemplified by the recent cold weather snap, UK
wholesalers when faced with a shortfall in natural gas supplies spiked the offer price into
the stratosphere
http://mip-prod-web.azurewebsites.net/PrevailingViewGraph/ViewReport?prevailingViewGraph=ActualPriceGraph&gasDate=2018-03-26
. No -- and I mean no -- EU suppliers made any bids. Now, it's either a Single
Market or it isn't. It either looks and acts like it's subject to market forces or it
doesn't. The rules are either enforced properly amongst all participants or they aren't.
Irony's of irony's, when the U.K. needed an augmented natural gas input to match system
demand, the only country to answer their doorbell was Russia. That, and some U.K. big
capacity users releasing stocks from storage.
Now, the smell of the nationalist pulling up the drawbridge in energy supply is causing
the Commission to try to document how in fact the Single Market sometimes isn't a market at
all but just a token gesture and is working on the usual eurofudge
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2018.032.01.0052.01.ENG&toc=OJ:L:2018:032:TOC
(the contortions of which did genuinely have me laughing out loud). There's going to be a lot
more of this to come once the U.K. can't be the donkey this kind of tail is routinely pinned
on.
And it'll be the same in the U.K. of course. Without the EU ready to play it's role of
perpetual bogeyman, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves. And I still cannot, in all
honesty, say anything other than bring it on.
People have avoided the difficulty of reciprocal citizen's rights. How can the UK
reciprocate with all the EU countries? Simultaneously? Where UK non-citizen residents can
relocate for 30 years to an EU country then relocate back in the same way that a Brit in
France can move to Germany for 30 years and then move back under current rules? It's even
worse if you consider reciprocity to include the rights of all people outside their
citizenship country's right to relocate.
The only obvious solution is to reduce Brits to the same status of any immigrant to a EU
country. That means not being able to shift your permanent residency without applying for
immigration.
Unless you are blue card eligible that's non-trivial.
Robert Bartley, the late editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, was a free trade
zealot who for decades championed a five-word amendment to the Constitution: "There shall be
open borders."
Bartley accepted what the erasure of America's borders and an endless influx or foreign
peoples and goods would mean for his country.
Said Bartley, "I think the nation-state is finished."
His vision and ideology had a long pedigree.
This free trade, open borders cult first flowered in 18th-century Britain. The St. Paul of
this post-Christian faith was Richard Cobden, who mesmerized elites with the grandeur of his
vision and the power of his rhetoric.
In Free Trade Hall in Manchester, Jan. 15, 1846, the crowd was so immense the seats had to
be removed. There, Cobden thundered:
"I look farther; I see in the Free Trade principle that which shall act on the moral world
as the principle of gravitation in the universe -- drawing men together, thrusting aside the
antagonisms of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal
peace."
Britain converted to this utopian faith and threw open her markets to the world. Across the
Atlantic, however, another system, that would be known as the "American System," had been
embraced.
The second bill signed by President Washington was the Tariff Act of 1789. Said the Founding
Father of his country in his first address to Congress: "A free people should promote such
manufactures as tend to make them independent on others for essential, particularly military
supplies."
In his 1791 "Report on Manufactures," Alexander Hamilton wrote, "Every nation ought to
endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the
means of subsistence, habitat, clothing and defence."
This was wisdom born of experience.
At Yorktown, Americans had to rely on French muskets and ships to win their independence.
They were determined to erect a system that would end our reliance on Europe for the
necessities of our national life, and establish new bonds of mutual dependency -- among
Americans.
Britain's folly became manifest in World War I, as a self-reliant America stayed out, while
selling to an import-dependent England the food, supplies and arms she needed to survive but
could not produce.
America's own first major steps toward free trade, open borders and globalism came with
JFK's Trade Expansion Act and LBJ's Immigration Act of 1965.
By the end of the Cold War, however, a reaction had set in, and a great awakening begun.
U.S. trade deficits in goods were surging into the hundreds of billions, and more than a
million legal and illegal immigrants were flooding in yearly, visibly altering the character of
the country.
Americans were coming to realize that free trade was gutting the nation's manufacturing base
and open borders meant losing the country in which they grew up. And on this earth there is no
greater loss.
The new resistance of Western man to the globalist agenda is now everywhere manifest.
We see it in Trump's hostility to NAFTA, his tariffs, his border wall.
We see it in England's declaration of independence from the EU in Brexit. We see it in the
political triumphs of Polish, Hungarian and Czech nationalists, in anti-EU parties rising
across Europe, in the secessionist movements in Scotland and Catalonia and Ukraine, and in the
admiration for Russian nationalist Vladimir Putin.
Europeans have begun to see themselves as indigenous peoples whose Old Continent is mortally
imperiled by the hundreds of millions of invaders wading across the Med and desperate come and
occupy their homelands.
Who owns the future? Who will decide the fate of the West?
The problem of the internationalists is that the vision they have on offer -- a world of
free trade, open borders and global government -- are constructs of the mind that do not engage
the heart.
Men will fight for family, faith and country. But how many will lay down their lives for
pluralism and diversity?
Who will fight and die for the Eurozone and EU?
On Aug. 4, 1914, the anti-militarist German Social Democrats, the oldest and greatest
socialist party in Europe, voted the credits needed for the Kaiser to wage war on France and
Russia. With the German army on the march, the German socialists were Germans first.
Patriotism trumps ideology.
In "Present at the Creation," Dean Acheson wrote of the postwar world and institutions born
in the years he served FDR and Truman in the Department of State: The U.N., IMF, World Bank,
Marshall Plan, and with the split between East and West, NATO.
We are present now at the end of all that.
And our transnational elites have a seemingly insoluble problem.
To rising millions in the West, the open borders and free trade globalism they cherish and
champion is not a glorious future, but an existential threat to the sovereignty, independence
and identity of the countries they love. And they will not go gentle into that good night.
"... Based on historical evidence, to believe that Trump (with his party - Republican control of House and Senate) will change our course is naive. By contrast, Obama D had both houses also - we got WAR, cash for clunkers, foreclosures, bank bailouts and health care by AHIP with runaway costs. ..."
In fifty years, very little has been done by US Federal Government which benefits the common citizen. A great deal has been done
to facilitate the degradation of the common citizen by the global one percent. We have a new world order as called for by GHW
Bush.
Based on historical evidence, to believe that Trump (with his party - Republican control of House and Senate) will change
our course is naive. By contrast, Obama D had both houses also - we got WAR, cash for clunkers, foreclosures, bank bailouts and
health care by AHIP with runaway costs.
Trump is and has been carrying out his own policies to enrich those that already have everything and to repeal any regulations
that were put into place to protect the people. Have you not noticed that he lined his cabinet with Goldman Sachs (which he blasted
HRC for associating her self with.
Like I said he and his gang are doing what they want to help enrich themselves on the backs of the rest of us. Wake up and
quit upholding these lying pieces of excrement they are no different than the ones before them.
Trump is a dirty businessman the things that he is doing are to benefit him and his family and to screw the rest of us and
tell us how great it is for us. You my man have drank from the Trump cup and think that anything that speaks against him is "fake
news" when in reality Trump and the likes of Breitbart are the "fake news" a little truth but a bunch of spin
In this state the current war between factions of the US elite reminds Stalin fight against "globalists" like Trotsky, who were
hell-bent of the idea of world revolution.
Notable quotes:
"... I would define Trump_vs_deep_state as "bastard neoliberalism" which tries to combine domestic "100% pure" neoliberalism with the rejection of neoliberal globalization as well as partial rejection of expensive effort for expansion of US led neoliberal empire via color revolutions and military invasions, especially in the Middle East. ..."
"... That makes screams of "soft neoliberals" from Democratic Party at "hard neoliberals" at Republican Party really funny indeed. Both are essentially "latter-day Trotskyites", yet they scream at each other, especially Obama/Clinton supporters ;-) ..."
"... But in reality Democratic sheeple are just a different type of wolfs -- wolfs in sheep clothing. And Hillary was an old, worn "classic neoliberal" shoe, which nobody really wants to wear. ..."
"... Trump does not intend to change the neoliberal consensus of what government should do domestically, and what should be the relationship between US government and business community. ..."
I would define Trump_vs_deep_state as "bastard neoliberalism" which tries
to combine domestic "100% pure" neoliberalism with the rejection of neoliberal globalization as well
as partial rejection of expensive effort for expansion of US led neoliberal empire via color revolutions
and military invasions, especially in the Middle East.
That's what seems to be the key difference of Trump_vs_deep_state from "classic neoliberalism" or as Sklar
called it "corporate liberalism".
From Reagan to Obama all US governments pray to the altar of classic neoliberalism. Now we have
a slight deviation.
That makes screams of "soft neoliberals" from Democratic Party at "hard neoliberals" at Republican
Party really funny indeed. Both are essentially "latter-day Trotskyites", yet they scream at each
other, especially Obama/Clinton supporters ;-)
In this sense Krugman recent writings are really pathetic and signify his complete detachment
from reality, or more correctly attempt to create an "artificial reality" in which bad wolf Trump
is going to eat Democratic sheeple. And in which media, FBI, and Putin are responsible entirely for
Hillary's loss.
But in reality Democratic sheeple are just a different type of wolfs -- wolfs in sheep clothing.
And Hillary was an old, worn "classic neoliberal" shoe, which nobody really wants to wear.
Trump does not intend to change the neoliberal consensus of what government should do domestically,
and what should be the relationship between US government and business community.
But the far right movement that he created and led has different ideas.
But Trump himself was quickly neutered (in just three month) and now does not represents
"Trumpism" (rejection of neoliberal globalization, unrestricted immigration for suppression of
wages, rejection of elimination of jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing,
rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as
global policemen and wars for Washington client Israel in Middle east, detente with Russia etc)
in any meaningful way. He is just an aging Narcissist in power.
Looks like Trump became a variant of Hillary minus sex change operation.
Notable quotes:
"... He supports same sex relations and marriage of the same. ..."
"... He is by nature a situational leader -- not typically a conservatives methodology of leadership ..."
"... . He mistakes support and loyalty for agreement. ..."
"... He seems too weak to stand his ground on key issues. Syria, (missile attack) ..."
"... His willingness to ignore -- Israel-US problematic relationship. ..."
"... I am leary of anyone who says tough things about immigration, but quietly backpedals or openly does the same -- DACA. ..."
it's easy to come away from CPAC energy and enthusiasm thinking your headline is an accurate
description of what is happening in the GOP. I am more conservative thankfully in my views
than most members at CPAC. And while I may not be the typical voter. I can say categorically,
that :trumoing" is not in my blood. Let's look what a consevative had to consider when
evaluating Pres Trump:
3. He supports same sex relations and marriage of the same.
... ... ...
5. He is by nature a situational leader -- not typically a conservatives methodology
of leadership
... ... ...
8 . He mistakes support and loyalty for agreement.
9. He seems too weak to stand his ground on key issues. Syria, (missile
attack)
10. His willingness to ignore -- Israel-US problematic relationship.
11. He thinks that Keynesian policy is a substitute for economic growth. monetary
policy.
12. I am leary of anyone who says tough things about immigration, but quietly
backpedals or openly does the same -- DACA.
"Note about Miss Mona Charin: the two agree on so many points on foreign policy, especially
Israel, it's hard to see her disdain. I think she rejects his troublesome demeanor and attitude.
Presidential decorum is a big deal to many."
Notable quotes:
"... The sixty plus millions of people who voted Trump are politically diverse. They have one thing in common. They were not persuaded by the loud, continuous and shameless lying of the corporate media. Rather they were motivated by it. ..."
Now his other supporters might say, considered against all the other candidates -- he's
better. Hmmmm, well, that's why I voted for him.
Thank you. My bullet points would differ from yours but in the end I also voted for Trump.
The sixty plus millions of people who voted Trump are politically diverse. They have one
thing in common. They were not persuaded by the loud, continuous and shameless lying of the
corporate media. Rather they were motivated by it.
The deplorables, having found one another, need to hang together until we find real
leadership. Trump, whatever he is, is not a leader.
"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
"... he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit. ..."
"... I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all. ..."
"... My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg ..."
jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me
with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out
their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially
in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).
Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and
it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a
basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a
form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the
personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of
the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns
this around and I doubt it's even possible.
Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of
evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst
themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a
country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of
course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his
clients.
I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with
this post:
Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various
defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed
war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their
torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy.
Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching
on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine
before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.
By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell
themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters
rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians.
Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny
accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept
responsibility.
That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking
to save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united
against Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that --
unlike Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability
threatens the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary
Clinton was a sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.
... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He
captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring
rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He
made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem
progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily
valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a
corrupt empire together.
Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does
another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's
simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability
to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable
hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.
------------
I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as
I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's
probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much
better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and
disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.
My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg
At the core of Trumpism is the rejection of neoliberalism
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands: " Consider
this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built
a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have
been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican
presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
Notable quotes:
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." ..."
"I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this
great man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world. We regard Marshal Stalin's life as most precious to the
hopes and hearts of all of us."
Returning home, Churchill assured a skeptical Parliament, "I know of no Government which stands to its obligations, even in its
own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government."
George W. Bush, with the U.S. establishment united behind him, invaded Iraq with the goal of creating a Vermont in the Middle
East that would be a beacon of democracy to the Arab and Islamic world.
Ex-Director of the NSA Gen. William Odom correctly called the U.S. invasion the greatest strategic blunder in American history.
But Bush, un-chastened, went on to preach a crusade for democracy with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."
... ... ...
After our victory in the Cold War, we not only plunged into the Middle East to remake it in our image, we issued war guarantees
to every ex-member state of the Warsaw Pact, and threatened Russia with war if she ever intervened again in the Baltic Republics.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing such an in-your-face challenge to a great nuclear power like Russia. If Putin's
Russia does not become the pacifist nation it has never been, these guarantees will one day be called. And America will either back
down -- or face a nuclear confrontation. Why would we risk something like this?
Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one
of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since
Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence
Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history.
But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants,
many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million,
composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.
Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation
and one people?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and
Divided America Forever."
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands:
" Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants,
not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits
since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic
independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
The truth is that now Trump does not represent "Trumpism" -- the movement that he created which includes the following:
– rejection of neoliberal globalization;
– rejection of unrestricted immigration;
– fight against suppression of wages by multinationals via cheap imported labor;
– fight against the elimination of meaningful, well-paying jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing;
– rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as global policemen and wars for
Washington client Israel in the Middle East;
– détente with Russia;
– more pragmatic relations with Israel and suppression of Israeli agents of influence;
– revision of relations with China and addressing the problem of trade deficit.
– rejection of total surveillance on all citizens;
– the cut of military expenses to one third or less of the current level and concentrating on revival on national infrastructure,
education, and science.
– abandonment of maintenance of the "sole superpower" status and global neoliberal empire for more practical and less costly "semi-isolationist"
foreign policy; closing of unnecessary foreign military bases and cutting aid to the current clients.
Of course, the notion of "Trumpism" is fuzzy and different people might include some additional issues and disagree with some
listed here, but the core probably remains.
Of course, Trump is under relentless attack (coup d'état or, more precisely, a color revolution) of neoliberal fifth column,
which includes Clinton gang, fifth column elements within his administration (Rosenstein, etc) as well from remnants of Obama
administration (Brennan, Comey, Clapper) and associated elements within corresponding intelligence agencies. He probably was forced
into some compromises just to survive. He also has members of the neoliberal fifth column within his family (Ivanka and Kushner).
So the movement now is in deep need of a new leader.
That's a good summary of what the public voted for and didn't get.
And whether Trump has sold out, or was blackmailed or was a cynical manipulative liar for the beginning is really irrelevant.
The fact is that he is not doing it – so he is just blocking the way.
At some point the US public are going to have to forget about their "representatives" (Trump and Congress and the rest of
them) and get out onto the street to make themselves heard. The population of the US is 323 million people and if just 1/2
of 1% (1,6 million) of them decided to visit Congress directly the US administration might get the message.
pyrrhus, March 3, 2018 at 2:15 am GMT
@anon
Finally, Pat understands that the American [Neoliberal] Empire and habit of intervention all over the world is a disaster.
it's easy to come away from CPAC energy and enthusiasm thinking your headline is an accurate
description of what is happening in the GOP. I am more conservative thankfully in my views
than most members at CPAC. And while I may not be the typical voter. I can say categorically,
that :trumoing" is not in my blood. Let's look what a consevative had to consider when
evaluating Pres Trump:
1. He has spent most of his life supporting the murder of children.
2. He supports a national healthcare policy
3. He supports same sex relations and marriage of the same.
4. He ha absolutely little or n o knowledge about scripture or its intent in practice.
5. He is by nature a situational leader -- not typically a conservatives methodology of
leadership
6. He can't reconcile historical criticism from deciphering a realistic image of the
country.
7. He thinks that the country has disadvantaged whites and the previous executive that
indication.
8. He mistakes support and loyalty for agreement.
9. He seems too weak to stand his ground on key issues. Syria, (missile attack)
10. His willingness to ignore – Israel-US problematic relationship.
11. He thinks that Keynesian policy is a substitute for economic growth. monetary
policy.
12. I am leary of anyone who says tough things about immigration, but quietly backpedals
or openly does the same -- DACA.
Now his other supporters might say, considered against all the other candidates -- he's
better. Hmmmm, well, that's why I voted for him. But that vote is not unconditional or
inconsiderate of where this executive and my conservative principles part company. On a
personal note -- someone who does not grasp celibacy in theory and practice -- is probably
not going to have a conservative bone in his core. There's one aspect of Pres. trump that
makes me leary -- but I will bite my tongue. What I have noted is on the record.
The fact that he says things that amount to standing up to democrats and liberals is one
thing, but what he engages in as to policy in many respects may not be that far off from
their own. Laugh -- he does think someone should stand up for people of faith -- that's a
relief.
Note about Miss Mona Charin: the two agree on so many points on foreign policy, especially
Israel, it's hard to see her disdain. I think she rejects his troublesome demeanor and
attitude. Presidential decorum is a big deal to many.
It wasn' t Trump who back pedaled on DACA. He issued the executive order that would
rescind it. But in accord with Marbury vs Madison 1804, just 2 low level judges, one in
Hawaii and one in Brooklyn NYC overturned the executive order.
The DoJ appealed it went to the Supreme court last week. The Supreme Court refused to hear
it.
So the rulings of just 2 low level judges prevailed over the executive order of an elected
president.
It wasn't Trump who back pedaled. It was our ridiculous judicial supremacy legal system
that ruled that the DACAs can stay. It's nothing new, it's been that way since 1804.
Only 2 presidents defied a Supreme Court ruling: Jackson in his order to expell Indians
and Lincon's Suspending haveas corpus for the 4 years of the civil war.
Face it, this country has been ruled by judges from the beginnning.
Abortion? If it were not for abortion the black criminal affirmative action neighborhood
and school destroying demographic would be at least 25 percent of the population instead of
12 percent.
No city or school has been able to withstand more than about a 10 percent black
population. 25 percent is totally destructive.
The anti homosexual thing is in the Jewish part of the Bible, not the Christian part. I
for one can't understand why so called Christians are so obsessed with the sex rape polygamy
lie cheat steal and massacre Jewish part of the Bible.
The 2 parts are total opposites. One is kill slay massacre lie cheat and steal. The other
is be good and generous sexually chaste virtuous and avoid war and massacring a defeated
enemy.
Don't blame Trump for losing on DACA. Blame our judicial supremacy system of
government
He backpedaled on DACA by not rescinding it on his first day in office like he promised.
He did so by creating a deadline and asking Congress do fix it rather than just take it apart
like he promised.
This district court judges do not have the power to tell a President that he must maintain
a clearly unconstitutional program that was created with nothing but the stroke of the
President's pen. He can and should simply ignore the lower courts ruling and force the
Supreme Court to get off their butts and reign in these lower courts that think they have the
power to make law.
The only reason the courts think they have this power is because everybody defers to them.
It is one thing for the court to rule that some law is unconstitutional but quite another for
courts to determine how those laws are implemented and what powers the executive has –
even when they have nothing to do with those enumerated in the Constitution.
The framers of the Constitution expected men, with all their lust for power, to jealously
guard their power and in so doing make it hard for any one part of the governmnt to get too
strong. However, now we have cowards in Congress ceding their power to the President so they
don't have to make tough decisions that they will be hels accountable for on election day and
we have weak Presidents hiding behind ridiculous rulings from unelected judges.
The betrayal has absolutely with a court ruling. His offered compromise is the issue and make
no mistake that was no compromise.
I could get in to some other choices the Pres could have chosen on the law created by DHS.
But we'd be having a discussion issues pertaining the use of government agencies to in effect
make laws without Congressional approval or the consent by the executive. Clearly with the
DACA memo, it's clear that its existence rests on the discretion of the executive's
enforcement of the law.
But as with most people, I get the excuse but the courts made me do it or wouldn't let me
do it. government. He could have issues his memo for his current DHS head to amend the
document, period. But I am dipping my toe where it need not be dipped to remain where I came
in -- this president caved as he has on several issues. His supposed deal is exemplary of his
choice to lob missiles and send troops into Syria.
He gets convinced he is being a "good guy". His hand ringing about a situation he himself
created is further indication of his willingness to betray principles come as to why people
like myself voted for him.
I have gone to bat for this executive even at the expense of my own moral codes for the
sake of fairness. No. His offerings were a betrayal with or without the cover of a court
ruling.
One year later we can say with confidence, yes he morphed into a neocon in foreign policy.
What is especially bad is that Trump executed "bait and switch" maneuver as smoothly as Obama. Devastating.
Notable quotes:
"... So now it gets me thinking like this: Who are Mr. Bandow's clients today? ..."
"... Some say that the reason for Trump's total reversal of his campaign-position on Russia is the American Deep State (the U.S. aristocracy and its agents). I agree with that view. ..."
"... I believe the American people are beginning to realize the CIA has the obsession for multiple, unending wars all for the benefit of Wall Street. ..."
"... It appears "military-industrial complex" or "deep state" refuses to take step back and insists on sucking more money from taxpayers. On first glance all is great for them, bombing of Middle East will continue, and so will military expansion at cost of civilian programs. However, ramifications to rest of the world should not be dismissed. EU countries are divided on following Washington hard line against Russia or diverge with USA. Currently, EU is cracking and might fall apart. Some in USA would cheer it but in long run it will mean loss of strongest US supporter against China. Regarding Middle East, Trump punished victims of AlQaeda and did nothing against financiers of AlQaeda, which will only increase local tensions. So indeed, not a great start... ..."
"... While I basically agree that Trump is not following through on his campaign, we must keep in mind that the campaign of his opponent was for MUCH more of the same, new wars, vastly increased fighting in current wars. So more of the same is in fact a big step down from the alternative. ..."
"... Stop those wars. They don't serve us. ..."
"... Trump's a liar, and his whole campaign was a calculated fraud from the beginning. We're the victims of a "bait-and-switch" scam. ..."
"... Because he lied. Just like he lied about draining the swamp and just restocked it with new varmints from Goldman Sachs and even an ex-Soros employee. Nothing new for me. Been watching elections for about 60 years and this is same ole. America can't take much more of this before it collapses and splits apart. The world isn't going to take much more from dc either. God help us. We are in a pickle! ..."
Candidate Donald Trump offered a sharp break from his predecessors. He was particularly critical of neoconservatives, who
seemed to back war at every turn.
Indeed, he promised not to include in his administration "those who have perfect resumes but very little to brag about except
responsibility for a long history of failed policies and continued losses at war." And he's generally kept that commitment, for
instance rejecting as deputy secretary of state Elliot Abrams, who said Trump was unfit to be president.
Substantively candidate Trump appeared to offer not so much a philosophy as an inclination. Practical if not exactly realist, he
cared more for consequences than his three immediate predecessors, who had treated wars as moral crusades in Somalia, the
Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. In contrast, Trump promised: "unlike other candidates for the presidency, war and
aggression will not be my first instinct."
Yet so far the Trump administration is shaping up as a disappointment for those who hoped for a break from the liberal
interventionist/neoconservative synthesis.
The first problem is staffing. In Washington people are policy. The president can speak and tweet, but he needs others to turn
ideas into reality and implement his directives. It doesn't appear that he has any foreign policy realists around him, or anyone
with a restrained view of America's international responsibilities.
Rex Tillerson, James Mattis and H. R. McMaster are all serious and talented, and none are neocons. But all seem inclined toward
traditional foreign policy approaches and committed to moderating their boss's unconventional thoughts. Most of the names
mentioned for deputy secretary of state have been reliably hawkish, or some combination of hawk and centrist-Abrams, John Bolton,
the rewired Jon Huntsman.
Trump appears to be most concerned with issues that have direct domestic impacts, and especially with economic nostrums about
which he is most obviously wrong. He's long been a protectionist (his anti-immigration opinions are of more recent vintage). Yet
his views have not changed even as circumstances have. The Chinese once artificially limited the value of the renminbi, but
recently have taken the opposite approach. The United States is not alone in losing manufacturing jobs, which are disappearing
around the world and won't be coming back. Multilateral trade agreements are rarely perfect, but they are not zero sum games.
They usually offer political as well as economic benefits. Trump does not seem prepared to acknowledge this, at least
rhetorically. Indeed he has brought on board virulent opponents of free trade such as Peter Navarro.
The administration's repudiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was particularly damaging. Trump's decision embarrassed
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who had offered important economic concessions to join. More important, Trump has abandoned
the economic field to the People's Republic of China, which is pushing two different accords. Australia, among other U.S. allies,
has indicated that it now will deal with Beijing, which gets to set the Pacific trade agenda. In this instance, what's good for
China is bad for the United States.
In contrast, on more abstract foreign policy issues President Trump seems ready to treat minor concessions as major victories and
move on. For years he criticized America's Asian and European allies for taking advantage of U.S. defense generosity. In his
March foreign policy speech, he complained that "our allies are not paying their fair share." During the campaign he suggested
refusing to honor NATO's Article 5 commitment and leave countries failing to make sufficient financial contributions to their
fate.
Yet Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson have insisted that Washington remains committed to the very same alliances incorporating
dependence on America. Worse, in his speech to Congress the president took credit for the small uptick in military outlays by
European NATO members which actually began in 2015: "based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning" to "meet
their financial obligations." Although he declared with predictable exaggeration that "the money is pouring in," no one believes
that Germany, which will go from 1.19 to 1.22 percent of GDP this year, will nearly double its outlays to hit even the NATO
standard of two percent.
Trump's signature policy initiative, rapprochement with Russia, appears dead in the water. Unfortunately, the president's strange
personal enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin undercut his desire to accommodate a great power which has no fundamental, irresolvable
conflicts with the America. Contrary to neocon history, Russia and America have often cooperated in the past. Moreover, President
Trump's attempt to improve relations faces strong ideological opposition from neoconservatives determined to have a new enemy and
partisan resistance from liberal Democrats committed to undermining the new administration.
President Trump also appears to have no appointees who share his commitment on this issue. At least Trump's first National
Security Adviser, Mike Flynn, wanted better relations with Russia, amid other, more dubious beliefs, but now the president seems
alone. In fact, Secretary Tillerson sounded like he was representing the Obama administration when he demanded Moscow's
withdrawal from Crimea, a policy nonstarter. Ambassador-designate Huntsman's views are unclear, but he will be constrained by the
State Department bureaucracy, which is at best unimaginative and at worst actively obstructionist.
"Unfortunately, the president's strange personal enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin undercut his desire to accommodate a great power
which has no fundamental, irresolvable conflicts with the America."
I did my due diligence on the writer after this absolutely baffling argument that has no basis on certain fundamental laws
of geopolitics. Referring to this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/n...
So now it gets me thinking like this: Who are Mr. Bandow's clients today? Figures...
Some say that the reason for Trump's total reversal of his campaign-position on Russia is the American Deep State (the U.S.
aristocracy and its agents). I agree with that view.
And other say you're a sap for believing a bunch of half-baked one-liners that Trump often contradicted in the same sentence...
He never had a coherent policy on anything, no less foreign policy... so don't complain now that he's showing his true colors
The USA should FORCE other nations to use DIPLOMACY as a means to preventing wars. If they don't, they lose all support, financial
and otherwise, from the USA. This would include Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The only thing Trump should take a look at in all this
is the INHUMANE policies that previous administrations have used to placate the military/industrial clique's appetite for money
and blood! If it's going to be "America First" for Trump's administration, it better start diverting this blood money to shore
up America's people and infrastructures!
Most of these issues come down to the fact that President Trump doesn't have anything resembling a "grand strategy", or even
a coherent foreign policy. His views are often at odds with each other (his desire to counter China economically and his opposition
to the TPP, for example), and I suspect that most were motivated by a desire to get votes more than any kind of deep understanding
of global affairs.
Most of his supporters, at least from what I can tell, are actually quite resolutely against entering a new war, and are strongly
condemnatory of the neo-conservatism that involved the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In fact, according to the polls taken at the time, more Democrats favored military intervention in Syria than Republicans did.
It appears "military-industrial complex" or "deep state" refuses to take step back and insists on sucking more money from taxpayers.
On first glance all is great for them, bombing of Middle East will continue, and so will military expansion at cost of civilian
programs. However, ramifications to rest of the world should not be dismissed. EU countries are divided on following Washington
hard line against Russia or diverge with USA. Currently, EU is cracking and might fall apart. Some in USA would cheer it but in
long run it will mean loss of strongest US supporter against China. Regarding Middle East, Trump punished victims of AlQaeda and
did nothing against financiers of AlQaeda, which will only increase local tensions. So indeed, not a great start...
While I basically agree that Trump is not following through on his campaign, we must keep in mind that the campaign of his
opponent was for MUCH more of the same, new wars, vastly increased fighting in current wars. So more of the same is in fact a
big step down from the alternative.
That does not excuse doing more of the same, but just asserts that we did get some of what we voted for/against.
We should get the rest of it. Stop those wars. They don't serve us.
There are similarities between Trump and Putin . The GOP and its rich corporate members have decided to use Trump as the oligarchs
in Russia used Yeltsin. The oligarchs used a drunken Yeltsin to pry the natural resources out of the public commons for the grabbing
by the oligarchs. Likewise, our rich are going to use an unwitting Trump to lower their taxes to nothing while delivering austerity
to the 99%.
To the oligarchs' surprise and dismay, Yeltsin's incompetence led to Putin and his scourge of the oligarchs. So will Trump's incompetence
lead to the end of our system of crony capitalism and the rebirth of socialism such as the New Deal, and higher taxes.
The crooked bastards can never be satisfied even with 3/4 ths of the whole pie, so no-one should pity them for being hoisted on
their own petard.
I'm sorry --- Trump had a foreign policy? As near as I can tell, he just said whatever the crowd in front of him wanted to
hear. Or do you have evidence to the contrary? Remember that this is a man who can be shown, in his own words, to have been on
all sides of almost every issue, depending on the day of the week, and the phase of the moon.
He, they, the US, that is, must obey Israel. Israel wants Assad gone in the end for their territorial expansion. It also helps
the oil companies and isolates Russia further into a geostrategic corner.
This headline is way over the top. The first and foremost foreign policy statement which brought numerous voters to Trump was
the US-Mexico wall and at least some of that wall will be constructed. Hence it is the only promise which has not (yet) changed
except for who will pay for it.
Why must we give Trump the benefit of the doubt and assume that his campaign presentations were made in good faith? That is
a very generous assumption.
There's a simple and more logical explanation for what's going on with "foreign policy" in the "Trump" administration:
Trump's
a liar, and his whole campaign was a calculated fraud from the beginning. We're the victims of a "bait-and-switch" scam.
Because he lied. Just like he lied about draining the swamp and just restocked it with new varmints from Goldman Sachs and
even an ex-Soros employee. Nothing new for me. Been watching elections for about 60 years and this is same ole. America can't
take much more of this before it collapses and splits apart. The world isn't going to take much more from dc either. God help
us. We are in a pickle!
The fundamental problem of exonerating Trump and blaming this non-reversal on the non-existing "deep state" is believing that
anything a candidate said on the campaign trail can be executed when that candidate becomes president. Such reversal has happened
so frequently in our history that it is truly amazing that " he does not do what he promised" still has adherents.
There is no reversal. I see reality clashing with words. I do not blame Trump for reversals. I see some shift from unrealistic
to more realistic. It is called learning on the job.
Every political position on the planet is stuck in the 80s. There is no one with a will to change what is happening, mostly
because no one wants to get tarred and feathered once the:
a) economy implodes upon itself in the most glorious Depression to
ever happen, and;
b) world war 3 erupts but engaging such a variety of opponents, from Islam to China and Russia and even minor
trivial players such as North Korea, and;
c) civil disobedience in the western world rivals that of even third world revolutions
as people revolt against a failure to protect them from Islamic violence, to preserve their standard of living and their perceived
futures. Lots of change coming, but nothing that any politician is promising.
Politicians are dinosaurs. We are entering a world
where large numbers of people will make things happen. It's called Democracy.
Trump will remain close to Putin ideologically and he might continue to admire the man as a strong leader BUT there is one
thing that neither Putin nor Trump can change and it is that Russia and America are natural rivals. Geopolitics. Land vs Sea.
Eurasia vs Atlantic. Heartland vs Outer Rim.
Trump is hawk, don't be mislead. You cannot have a great country if you're not willing
to kill and die for it. Russia knows that. Which is why Putin made Russia great again after the horror of the Yeltsin years. Now
America knows that too.
Watch: Bernie Sanders' Response to Trump State of the Union
"Here's the story that Trump failed to mention "
Following President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a response.
"I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to Trump's State of the Union speech," Sanders announced. "But I also want
to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, Trump chose not to discuss."
And, he added, "I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year."
Watch:
... ... ...
The complete text of Sanders' prepared remarks follow:
Good evening. Thanks for joining us.
Tonight , I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to President Trump's State of the Union speech. But I want
to do more than just that. I want to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, President Trump chose
not to discuss. I want to talk to you about the lies that he told during his campaign and the promises he made to working people
which he did not keep.
Finally, I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty,
and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year.
President Trump talked tonight about the strength of our economy. Well, he's right. Official unemployment today is 4.1 percent
which is the lowest it has been in years and the stock market in recent months has soared. That's the good news.
But what President Trump failed to mention is that his first year in office marked the lowest level of job creation since
2010. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 254,000 fewer jobs were created in Trump's first 11 months in office
than were created in the 11 months before he entered office.
Further, when we talk about the economy, what's most important is to understand what is happening to the average worker. And
here's the story that Trump failed to mention tonight .
Over the last year, after adjusting for inflation, the average worker in America saw a wage increase of, are you ready for
this, 4 cents an hour, or 0.17%. Or, to put it in a different way, that worker received a raise of a little more than $1.60 a week.
And, as is often the case, that tiny wage increase disappeared as a result of soaring health care costs.
Meanwhile, at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the rich continue to get much richer while millions of American
workers are working two or three jobs just to keep their heads above water. Since March of last year, the three richest people in
America saw their wealth increase by more than $68 billion. Three people. A $68 billion increase in wealth. Meanwhile, the average
worker saw an increase of 4 cents an hour.
Tonight , Donald Trump touted the bonuses he claims workers received because of his so-called "tax reform" bill. What he forgot
to mention is that only 2% of Americans report receiving a raise or a bonus because of this tax bill.
What he also failed to mention is that some of the corporations that have given out bonuses, such as Walmart, AT&T, General
Electric, and Pfizer, are also laying off tens of thousands of their employees. Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex and Huggies,
recently said they were using money from the tax cut to restructure -- laying off more than 5,000 workers and closing 10 plants.
What Trump also forgot to tell you is that while the Walton family of Walmart, the wealthiest family in America, and Jeff
Bezos of Amazon, the wealthiest person in this country, have never had it so good, many thousands of their employees are forced onto
Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing because of the obscenely low wages they are paid. In my view, that's wrong. The taxpayers
of this country should not be providing corporate welfare to the wealthiest families in this country.
Trump's Broken Promises
Now, let me say a few words about some of the issues that Donald Trump failed to mention tonight , and that is the difference
between what he promised the American people as a candidate and what he has delivered as president.
Many of you will recall, that during his campaign, Donald Trump told the American people how he was going to provide "health
insurance for everybody," with "much lower deductibles."
That is what he promised working families all across this country during his campaign. But as president he did exactly the
opposite. Last year, he supported legislation that would have thrown up to 32 million people off of the health care they had while,
at the same time, substantially raising premiums for older Americans.
The reality is that although we were able to beat back Trump's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 3 million fewer Americans
have health insurance today than before Trump took office and that number will be going even higher in the coming months.
During his campaign, Trump promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
As president, however, he supported a Republican Budget Resolution that proposed slashing Medicaid by $1 trillion and cutting
Medicare by $500 billion. Further, President Trump's own budget called for cutting Social Security Disability Insurance by $64 billion.
During Trump's campaign for president, he talked about how he was going to lower prescription drug prices and take on the
greed of the pharmaceutical industry which he said was "getting away with murder." Tonight he said "one of my greatest priorities
is to reduce the price of prescription drugs."
But as president, Trump nominated Alex Azar, a former executive of the Eli Lilly Company -- one of the largest drug companies
in this country -- to head up the Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump spoke about how in other countries "drugs cost far less," yet he has done nothing to allow Americans to purchase less
expensive prescription drugs from abroad or to require Medicare to negotiate drug prices – which he promised he would do when he
ran for president.
During the campaign, Donald Trump told us that: "The rich will not be gaining at all" under his tax reform plan.
Well, that was quite a whopper. As president, the tax reform legislation Trump signed into law a few weeks ago provides 83
percent of the benefits to the top one percent, drives up the deficit by $1.7 trillion, and raises taxes on 92 million middle class
families by the end of the decade.
During his campaign for president, Trump talked about how he was going to take on the greed of Wall Street which he said "has
caused tremendous problems for us.
As president, not only has Trump not taken on Wall Street, he has appointed more Wall Street billionaires to his administration
than any president in history. And now, on behalf of Wall Street, he is trying to repeal the modest provisions of the Dodd-Frank
legislation which provide consumer protections against Wall Street thievery.
What Trump Didn't Say
But what is also important to note is not just Trump's dishonesty. It is that tonight he avoided some of the most important
issues facing our country and the world.
How can a president of the United States give a State of the Union speech and not mention climate change? No, Mr. Trump, climate
change is not a "hoax." It is a reality which is causing devastating harm all over our country and all over the world and you are
dead wrong when you appoint administrators at the EPA and other agencies who are trying to decimate environmental protection rules,
and slow down the transition to sustainable energy.
How can a president of the United States not discuss the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allows billionaires
like the Koch brothers to undermine American democracy by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates who will represent
the rich and the powerful?
How can he not talk about Republican governors efforts all across this country to undermine democracy, suppress the vote and
make it harder for poor people or people of color to vote?
How can he not talk about the fact that in a highly competitive global economy, hundreds of thousands of bright young people
are unable to afford to go to college, while millions of others have come out of school deeply in debt?
How can he not talk about the inadequate funding and staffing at the Social Security Administration which has resulted in
thousands of people with disabilities dying because they did not get their claims processed in time?
How can he not talk about the retirement crisis facing the working people of this country and the fact that over half of older
workers have no retirement savings? We need to strengthen pensions in this country, not take them away from millions of workers.
How can he not talk about the reality that Russia, through cyberwarfare, interfered in our election in 2016, is interfering
in democratic elections all over the world, and according to his own CIA director will likely interfere in the 2018 midterm elections
that we will be holding. How do you not talk about that unless you have a very special relationship with Mr. Putin?
What Trump Did Talk About
Now, let me say a few words about what Trump did talk about.
Trump talked about DACA and immigration, but what he did not tell the American people is that he precipitated this crisis
in September by repealing President Obama's executive order protecting Dreamers.
We need to seriously address the issue of immigration but that does not mean dividing families and reducing legal immigration
by 25-50 percent. It sure doesn't mean forcing taxpayers to spend $25 billion on a wall that candidate Trump promised Mexico would
pay for. And it definitely doesn't mean a racist immigration policy that excludes people of color from around the world.
To my mind, this is one of the great moral issues facing our country. It would be unspeakable and a moral stain on our nation
if we turned our backs on these 800,000 young people who were born and raised in this country and who know no other home but the
United States.
And that's not just Bernie Sanders talking. Poll after poll shows that over 80 percent of the American people believe that
we should protect the legal status of these young people and provide them with a path toward citizenship.
We need to pass the bi-partisan DREAM Act, and we need to pass it now.
President Trump also talked about the need to rebuild our country's infrastructure. And he is absolutely right. But the proposal
he is bringing forth is dead wrong.
Instead of spending $1.5 trillion over ten years rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, Trump would encourage states to
sell our nation's highways, bridges, and other vital infrastructure to Wall Street, wealthy campaign contributors, even foreign governments.
And how would Wall Street and these corporations recoup their investments? By imposing massive new tolls and fees paid for
by American commuters and homeowners.
The reality is that Trump's plan to privatize our nation's infrastructure is an old idea that has never worked and never will
work.
Tonight , Donald Trump correctly talked about the need to address the opioid crisis. Well, I say to Donald Trump, you don't
help people suffering from opioid addiction by cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion. If you are serious about dealing with this crisis,
we need to expand, not cut Medicaid.
Conclusion/A Progressive Agenda
My fellow Americans. The simple truth is that, according to virtually every poll, Donald Trump is the least popular president
after one year in office of any president in modern American history. And the reason for that is pretty clear. The American people
do not want a president who is compulsively dishonest, who is a bully, who actively represents the interests of the billionaire class,
who is anti-science, and who is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our nation of origin, our religion, our gender,
or our sexual orientation.
That is not what the American people want. And that reality is the bad news that we have to deal with.
But the truth is that there is a lot of good news out there as well. It's not just that so many of our people disagree with
Trump's policies, temperament, and behavior. It is that the vast majority of our people have a very different vision for the future
of our country than what Trump and the Republican leadership are giving us.
In an unprecedented way, we are witnessing a revitalization of American democracy with more and more people standing up and
fighting back. A little more than a year ago we saw millions of people take to the streets for the women's marches and a few weeks
ago, in hundreds of cities and towns around the world, people once again took to the streets in the fight for social, economic, racial
and environmental justice.
Further, we are seeing the growth of grassroots organizations and people from every conceivable background starting to run
for office – for school board, city council, state legislature, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.
In fact, we are starting to see the beginning of a political revolution, something long overdue.
And these candidates, from coast to coast, are standing tall for a progressive agenda, an agenda that works for the working
families of our country and not just the billionaire class. These candidates understand that the United States has got to join the
rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare for All, single-payer
program.
They understand that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the top one-tenth of one percent now owns almost
as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we should not be giving tax breaks for billionaires but demanding that they start paying
their fair share of taxes.
They know that we need trade policies that benefit working people, not large multi-national corporations.
They know that we have got to take on the fossil fuel industry, transform our energy system and move to sustainable energies
like wind, solar and geothermal.
They know that we need a $15 an hour federal minimum wage, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and universal
childcare.
They understand that it is a woman who has the right to control her own body, not state and federal governments, and that
woman has the right to receive equal pay for equal work and work in a safe environment free from harassment.
They also know that if we are going to move forward successfully as a democracy we need real criminal justice reform and we
need to finally address comprehensive immigration reform.
Yes. I understand that the Koch brothers and their billionaire friends are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
in the 2018 mid-term elections supporting the Trump agenda and right-wing Republicans. They have the money, an unlimited amount of
money. But we have the people, and when ordinary people stand up and fight for justice there is nothing that we cannot accomplish.
That has been the history of America, and that is our future.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon once told Ivanka Trump: "You're just
another staffer who doesn't know what you're doing," according to a new book.
Related: Ivanka Trump's "special place in hell" for child predators comment trolls Roy Moore
rally
Bannon, who has long critiqued and clashed with Ivanka's and her husband Jared Kushner's
roles in the White House, tried to put the president's daughter in her place in one instance
detailed in the book.
"My daughter loves me as a dad...You love your dad. I get that. But you're just another
staffer who doesn't know what you're doing," Bannon said, The Washington Post reported when it
published excerpts on Monday.
The revelation is part of the latest book about life inside the White House. Howard Kurtz, host
of the Fox News show Media Buzz, wrote the book Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press, And The
War Over The Truth, set to be released on January 29.
The new book, though perhaps not as sensational as the explosive tell-all Fire and Fury:
Inside the Trump White House, contains several new alleged revelations about the
administration. Along with reports of the turbulent relationship between Ivanka Trump and
Bannon, are claims that the president himself leaked information to journalists, that his aides
referred to his behavior as "defiance disorder" and that his staff was "blindsided" when he
accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones.
A more interesting question is how those testimonies might affect Bannon -- he is in a very hot water now. If he thought that the
meeting was so incriminating why he did not contact FBI and just decided to feed juicy gossip to Wolff?
Also he was not present at the meeting and was not a member of Trump team until two months later. From who he got all this information
? Was is just a slander by disgruntled employee?
Notable quotes:
"... To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr. ..."
"... Bannon has denied that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the election ..."
"... Wolff also quotes the former White House strategist as saying, "This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It's as plain as a hair on your face." ..."
"... Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that "[i]t goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me." ..."
"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the
conference room on the 25th floor -- with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers," Bannon is quoted as saying in Fire and Fury.
"Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should
have called the F.B.I. immediately." Bannon reportedly speculated that the chance the eldest Trump son did not involve his father
in the meeting "is zero."
When Bannon's comments became public, Trump excoriated his former strategist, whom
he accused of having "lost his mind."
But while Bannon has since apologized for the remarks and sought to walk back a number of the quotes, he's stopped short of denying
that he viewed the Trump Tower meeting as treasonous. Instead, he's merely shifted the blame away from Trump Jr. and onto Manafort.
"My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate.
He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning, and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr.
," Bannon said in
a statement to Axios. ( Bannon has denied that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the election
.)
... ... ...
Though the Trump Tower meeting took place before Bannon joined the Trump campaign, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House
panel, told
CNN last week that he plans to question Bannon about "why this meeting at Trump Tower represented his treason and certainly unpatriotic
at a minimum."
Jared Kushner's "greasy shit"
Wolff also quotes the former White House strategist as saying, "This is all about money laundering. [Robert] Mueller chose
[senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul
Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner . . . It's as plain as a hair on your face." (Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort have all
denied wrongdoing.) Bannon then zeroed in on Kushner specifically, adding that "[i]t goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner
shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They're going to go right through that. They're going to roll those two guys up and say play me
or trade me."
He and Trump's son-in-law have never seen eye to eye; their White House feuds were a poorly kept secret, and following his ouster,
Bannon has given numerous interviews knocking Kushner, including one to my colleague Gabriel Sherman in which he
questioned Kushner's
maturity level. If Bannon has dirt on Kushner, he will likely get his chance to reveal it; Schiff also
declared
his intent to question Bannon on "the basis of his concern over money laundering."
"... What do you think? Perhaps almost 60,000 Americans dying in Vietnam was a darker time. Or maybe when Hitler's armies rolled across Europe, Japan surprise attacked Pearl Harbor, and 400,000 American soldiers died World War II. ..."
"... Anyone who thinks Trump's Presidency is the darkest time in American history is a poor student of American history. And I must assume their lives are pretty amazing if this is the worst they have ever felt. ..."
I saw someone refer to the Trump Presidency as "possibly the darkest time in American
history." I've heard some iteration of that many times from people still in a frenzy over the
Trump Administration.
I'm not a big Trump fan. I wasn't a big Obama fan either. But their presence in office did
not and does not hang over my life like a dark cloud. They really aren't that important.
Yes, they have the ability to make life more difficult for many. It is unfortunate that any
politicians have that much control over our day to day lives.
But the darkest time in American history ?
What do you think? Perhaps almost 60,000 Americans dying in Vietnam was a darker time. Or
maybe when Hitler's armies rolled across Europe, Japan surprise attacked Pearl Harbor, and
400,000 American soldiers died World War II.
For Japanese Americans, FDR's
presidency was likely a darker time, as they sat in detainment facilities. Their crime was
having Japanese ancestors.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu swept across the globe killing at least 20 million people worldwide,
675,000 Americans. At the same time, soldiers were coming home from WWI blinded by chemicals
and mutilated by bombs.
And that is just going back one century. American history also includes the Civil War,
slavery, and
the Whiskey Rebellion .
Anyone who thinks Trump's Presidency is the darkest time in American history is a poor
student of American history. And I must assume their lives are pretty amazing if this is the
worst they have ever felt.
... ... ...
Look at where it left the global
warming alarmists . They wanted to reduce pollution, which is a noble cause. But they lied
about the goals, they lied about the causes, and they exaggerated the timetable. It's the
classic boy who cried wolf.
... ... ...
I used to be paranoid about the government. Obviously, some of that paranoia is well
founded. They do monitor communications and
disrupt online discourse . They do violate
rights . They are oppressive
in many ways.
"Mr. President," Acosta shouted three times, finally getting Trump's attention, "Did you say
that you want more people to come in from Norway? Did you say that you wanted more people from
Norway? Is that true Mr. President?" Acosta barked at Trump.
" I want them to come in from everywhere everywhere. Thank you very much everybody ," Trump
replied while Acosta continued to interject.
" Just Caucasian or white countries, sir? Or do you want people to come in from other parts
of the world people of color ," Acosta asked - effectively calling Trump racist, to which Trump
looked Acosta directly in the eye and simply said:
Acosta spoke about the incident with Wolf Blitzer afterwards and said it was clear the
president was ordering him out of the room. Acosta said he tried to ask his questions again
when Trump and Nazarbayev gave a joint statement later on, but Deputy Press Secretary Hogan
Gidley "got right up in my face" and started shouting at him to block out any questions.
"It was that kind of a display," Acosta recalled. "It reminded me of something you might see
in less democratic countries when people at the White House or officials of a foreign
government attempt to get in the way of the press in doing their jobs."
Acosta and CNN were infamously humiliated after Trump called them "fake news" during a
January, 2017 press conference in which Acosta attempted to shoehorn a question in front of
another reporter:
Meanwhile, Acosta was shut down in December by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders
after he tried to grandstand during a press briefing over being called "Fake News," telling her
that sometimes reporters make "honest mistakes."
Sanders shot back; "When journalists make honest mistakes, they should own up to them.
Sometimes, and a lot of times, you don't," only to be temporarily cut off by Acosta.
"I'm sorry, I'm not finished," Sanders fired back, adding "There is a very big difference
between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American people... you cannot
say it's an honest mistake when you're purposely putting out information you know is
false."
Bannon backed candidate later lost. So much for this Bannon "success".
This idea of Trump playing 6 dimensional chess is a joke. It's the same explanation that was pushed for Obama disastrous neocon
foreign policy. Here is one very apt quote: "What Trump has done are disasters, and equates to treason. Selling billions of dollars
of weapons the our enemies the terrorists/Saudis, killing innocent people in Syria, and Yemen, sending more troops to
Afghanistan..." What 6-dimetional chess?
According to Occam razor principle the simplest explanation of Trump behaviour is probably the most correct. He does not control
foright policy, outsourcing it to "generals" and be does not pursue domestic policy of creating jobs as he promised his
electorate. In other words, both in foreign policy and domestic policy, he became a turncoat,
betraying his electorate, much like Obama. kind of Republican Obama.
And as time goes by, Trump looks more and more like Hillary II or Republican Obama. So he might have problems with the candidates he supports
in midterm elections. His isolationism, if it ever existed, is gone. Promise of jobs is gone. Detente with Russia is gone.
What's left?
Note the level disappointment of what used to be Trump base in this site comment section...
Notable quotes:
"... In a serious rebuke for President Trump (and perhaps moreso for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), ousted judge and alt-right favorite Roy Moore has won the Alabama Republican Primary by a landslide ..."
"... The Steve Bannon-backed candidate, who defied court orders to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom and refused to recognize gay marriage after the Supreme Court's June 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, is leading by 9.6 points with 92% of the votes counted... ..."
"... These attacks on Bannon were one of the most prominent news stories in the first week following Trump's election victory. It didn't take long, however, for a counter-attack to emerge - from the right-wing elements of the Jewish community. ..."
"... Bannon is a true fucking patriot trying to pull this once great country from the sinkhole. ..."
"... I think the reality is that this was a message to McConnell much more than Trump. That message is simple: I'm coming to kill your career. Bannon went out of his way to say he fully supports Trump (despite backing the opposite candidate). And, let's face it, if Bannon buries McConnell, he's doing everyone a service, Trump included. ..."
"... The echo chamber media "is so surprised" that in Germany and the US we are seeing a rising tide of pissed off people, well imagine fucking that? Leaving the echo chamber and not intellectually trying to understand the anger, but living the anger. ..."
"... Well, we can only hope that Trump gets the message. He was elected to be President of the USA, not Emperor of the World. Quote from that Monty Python film: "He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy!" ..."
"... A cursory background reading on Roy Moore tells me that he is one of the worst types for public office. And he might just turn out to be like Trump -- act like an anti-swarm cowboy and promise a path to heaven, then show his real colors as an Establishment puppet once the braindead voters put him in office. ..."
"... When Trump won the Republican nomination, and then the Presidency it was because people were rebelling against the establishment rulers. There is considerable disgust with these big government rulers that are working for themselves and their corporate cronies, but not for the US population. ..."
"... Trump seems to have been compromised at this point, and his support of the establishment favourite, Luther Strange is evidence that he isn't really the outsider he claimed to be. Moore's victory in Alabama says the rebellion still has wheels, so there is some hope. ..."
"... In Missouri where I live, the anti-establishment Republican contender for the upcoming US Senatorial 2018 race is Austin Peterson. It will be interesting to see how he, and his counterparts in other states do in the primaries. Both of the current Missouri Senators are worthless. ..."
"... I remember well the last "3-Dimensional Chess master" Obama while he too was always out maneuvering his apponents, per the media reports... ..."
"... Every now and then Trump tends to make huge blunders, and sometimes betrayals without knowing what he is doing. "Champions"- (great leaders) do not do that. ..."
"... What Trump has done are disasters, and equates to treason. Selling billions of dollars of weapons the our enemies the terrorists/Saudis, killing innocent people in Syria, and Yemen, sending more troops to Afghanistan... ..."
"... It is epitome of self-delusion to see people twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to justify/rationalize Trump's continuing display of disloyalty to America ..."
"... YOU CAN'T BE A ZIONIST AND AN AMERICAN FIRSTER, IT IS ONE OR THE OTHER. ..."
Congratulations to Roy Moore on his Republican Primary win in Alabama. Luther Strange started way back & ran a good race. Roy,
WIN in Dec!
In a serious rebuke for President Trump (and perhaps moreso for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), ousted judge and
alt-right favorite Roy Moore has won the Alabama Republican Primary by a landslide
The Steve Bannon-backed candidate, who defied court orders to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom and refused to
recognize gay marriage after the Supreme Court's June 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, is leading by 9.6 points with 92%
of the votes counted...
... ... ...
However, as Politco
reported this evening, President Donald Trump began distancing himself from a Luther Strange loss before ballots were even cast,
telling conservative activists Monday night the candidate he's backing in Alabama's GOP Senate primary was likely to lose ! and suggesting
he'd done everything he could do given the circumstances.
Trump told conservative activists who visited the White House for dinner on Monday night that he'd underestimated the political
power of Roy Moore, the firebrand populist and former judge who's supported by Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, according
to three people who were there.
And Trump gave a less-than full-throated endorsement during Friday's rally.
While he called Strange "a real fighter and a real good guy," he also mused on stage about whether he made a "mistake" by backing
Strange and committed to campaign "like hell" for Moore if he won.
Trump was encouraged to pick Strange before the August primary by son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner as well as other aides,
White House officials said. He was never going to endorse Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, who has at times opposed Trump's agenda,
and knew little about Moore, officials said.
... ... ...
Déjà view -> Sanity Bear •Sep 26, 2017 11:19 PM
AIPAC HAS ALL BASES COVERED...MIGA !
On Sept. 11, the Alabama Daughters for Zion organization circulated a statement on Israel by Moore, which started by saying
the U.S. and Israel "share not only a common Biblical heritage but also institutions of representative government and respect
for religious freedom." He traced Israel's origin to God's promise to Abram and the 1948 creation of modern Israel as "a fulfillment
of the Scriptures that foretold the regathering of the Jewish people to Israel."
Moore's statement includes five policy positions, including support for U.S. military assistance to Israel, protecting Israel
from "Iranian aggression," opposing boycotts of Israel, supporting Israel at the United Nations, and supporting direct Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations without outside pressure. He added, "as long as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority wrongly refuse to recognize Israel's
right to exist, such negotiations have scant chance of success."
While those views would give Moore common ground with much of the Jewish community regarding Israel, most of the state's Jewish
community has been at odds with Moore over church-state issues, such as his displays of the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and
his outspoken stance against homosexuality, both of which led to him being ousted as chief justice.
moore misreads the Bible as most socalled christians do. they have been deceived, they have confused the Israel of God( those
who have been given belief in Christ) with israel of the flesh. They cant hear Christs own words, woe is unto them. they are living
in their own selfrighteousness, not good. they are going to have a big surprise for not following the Word of God instead following
the tradition of men.
They were warned over and over in the Bible but they cant hear.
I Claudius -> VinceFostersGhost •Sep 27, 2017 6:27 AM
Forgive? Maybe. Forget? NEVER!! He tried to sell "US" out on this one. We now need to focus on bringing "Moore" candidates
to the podium to run against the RINO's and take out McConnell and Ryan. It's time for Jared and Ivanka to go back to NYC so Jared
can shore up his family's failing empire. However, if his business acumen is as accurate as his political then it's no wonder
the family needed taxpayer funded visas to sell the property. Then on to ridding the White House of Gen Kelly and McMaster - two
holdover generals from the Obama administration - after Obama forced out the real ones.
Clashfan -> Mycroft Holmes IV •Sep 26, 2017 11:33 PM
Rump has hoodwinked his supoprt base and turned on them almost immediately. Some refuse to acknowledge this.
These attacks on Bannon were one of the most prominent news stories in the first week following Trump's election victory.
It didn't take long, however, for a counter-attack to emerge - from the right-wing elements of the Jewish community. The
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) came to Bannon's defense and accused the ADL of a "character assassination" against Bannon.
The Wizard -> Oh regional Indian •Sep 26, 2017 10:12 PM
Trump should figure out the Deep State elites he has surrounded himself with, don't have control of the states Trump won. Trump
thought he had to negotiate with these guys and his ego got the best of him. Bannon was trying to convince him he should have
stayed the course and not give in.
~"American politics gets moore strange by the day..."~
Technically speaking OhRI, with Moore's win politics became less Strange, or "Strange less", or "Sans Luther", depending on
how one chose to phrase it [SMIRK]
Adullam -> Gaius Frakkin' Baltar •Sep 26, 2017 11:05 PM
Trump needs to fire Jared! Some news outlets are saying that it was his son in law who advised him to back Strange. He has
to quit listening to those who want to destroy him or ... they will.
overbet -> Killtruck •Sep 26, 2017 9:41 PM
Bannon is a true fucking patriot trying to pull this once great country from the sinkhole.
Juggernaut x2 -> overbet •Sep 26, 2017 10:07 PM
Trump better pull his head out of his ass and quit being a wishy-washy populist on BS like Iran- the farther right he goes
the greater his odds of reelection because he has pissed off a lot of the far-righters that put him in- getting rid of Kushner,
Cohn and his daughter and negotiating w/Assad and distancing us from Israhell would be a huge help.
The whole Russiagate ploy was a diversion from (((them)))
NoDebt -> Killtruck •Sep 26, 2017 9:42 PM
I think the reality is that this was a message to McConnell much more than Trump. That message is simple: I'm coming to
kill your career. Bannon went out of his way to say he fully supports Trump (despite backing the opposite candidate). And, let's
face it, if Bannon buries McConnell, he's doing everyone a service, Trump included.
Oldwood -> NoDebt •Sep 26, 2017 10:08 PM
I think it was a setup.
Bannon would not oppose Trump that directly unless there was a wink and a nod involved.
Trump is still walking a tightrope, trying to appease his base AND keep as many establishment republicans at his side (even
for only optics). By Trump supporting Strange while knowing he was an underdog AND completely apposed by Bannon/his base he was
able to LOOK like he was supporting the establishment, while NOT really. Trump seldom backs losers which makes me think it was
deliberate. Strange never made sense anyway.
But what do I know?
Urahara -> NoDebt •Sep 27, 2017 12:20 AM
Bannon is hardcore Isreal first. Why are you supporting the zionist? It's an obvious play.
general ambivalent -> Urahara •Sep 27, 2017 2:23 AM
People are desperate to rationalise their failure into a victory. They cannot give up on Hope so they have to use hyperbole
in everything and pretend this is all leading to something great in 2020 or 2024.
None of these fools learned a damn thing and they are desperate to make the same mistake again. The swamp is full, so full
that it has breached the banks and taken over all of society. Trump is a swamp monster, and you simply cannot reform the swamp
when both sides are monsters. In other words, the inside is not an option, so it has to be done the hard way. But people would
prefer to keep voting in the swamp.
Al Gophilia -> NoDebt •Sep 27, 2017 3:58 AM
Bannon as president would really have those swamp creatures squirming. There wouldn't be this Trump crap about surrounding
himself with likeminded friends, such as Goldman Sachs turnstile workers and his good pals in the MIC.
Don't tell me he didn't choose them because if he didn't, then they were placed. That means he doesn't have the clout he pretends
to have or control of the agenda that the people asked him to deliver. His backing of Stange is telling.
Bobbyrib -> LindseyNarratesWordress •Sep 27, 2017 5:38 AM
He will not fire Kushner or Ivanka who have become part of the swamp. I'm so sick of these 'Trump is a genius and planned this
all along.'
To me Trump is a Mr. Bean type character that has been very fortunate and just goes with the flow. He has nearly no diplomacy,
or strategic skills.
NoWayJose •Sep 26, 2017 10:35 PM
Dear President Trump - if you like your job, listen to these voters. Borders, Walls, limited immigrants (including all those
that Ryan and McConnell are sneaking through under your very nose), trade agreements to keep American jobs, and respect for our
flag, our country, and the unborn!
I had hope for Trump, but as someone who reads ZH often, and does not suffer from amnesia (like much of America), I knew he
was way too good to be true.
We all know his back tracking, his flip flops...and while the media and many paid bloggers like to spin it as "not his fault",
it actually is.
His sending DACA to Congress was the last straw. Obama enacted DACA with a stroke of his pen, but Trump "needed to send it
to Congress so they could "get it right". The only thing Congress does with immigration is try and get amnesty passed.
Of course while Trump sends DACA to Congress, he does not mind using the military without Congress, which he actually should
do.
Why is it when it's something American's want, it has to go through the "correct channels", but when its something the Zionists
want, he does it with the wave of his pen? We saw the same bull shit games with Obama...
Dilluminati •Sep 26, 2017 11:02 PM
Anybody surprised by this is pretending the civility at the workplace isn't masking anger at corporate America and Government.
I'll go in and put in the 8 hours, I'm an adult that is part of the job. However I'm actually fed up with allot of the stupid
shit and want the establishment to work, problem is that we are witnessing failed nations, failed schools, failed healthcare,
even failed employment contracts, conditions, and wages.
The echo chamber media "is so surprised" that in Germany and the US we are seeing a rising tide of pissed off people, well
imagine fucking that? Leaving the echo chamber and not intellectually trying to understand the anger, but living the anger.
You haven't seen anything yet in Catalonia/Spain etc, Brexit, or so..
This is what failure looks like: That moment the Romanovs and Louis XVI looked around the room seeking an understanding eye,
there was none.
Pascal1967 •Sep 26, 2017 11:19 PM
Dear Trump:
Quit listening to your moron son-in-law, swamp creature, Goldman Sachs douchebag son-in-law Kushner. HE SUCKS!! If you truly
had BALLS, you would FIRE his fucking ass. HE is The Swamp, He Is Nepotism! THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HATE HIM.
MAGA! LISTEN TO BANNON, DONALD.
DO NOT FUCK THIS UP!
ROY MOORE, 100%!!!!
You lost, Trump ... get your shit together before it is too late!
ElTerco •Sep 26, 2017 11:28 PM
Bannon was always the smarts behind the whole operation. Now we are just left with a complete idiot in office.
Also, unlike Trump, Bannon actually gives a shit about what happens to the American people rather than the American tax system.
At the end of the day, all Trump really cares about is himself.
samsara •Sep 26, 2017 11:25 PM
I think most people get it backwards about Trump and the Deplorables.
I believed in pulling troops a from all the war zones and Trump said he felt the same
I believed in Legal immigration, sending people back if here illegal especially if involved in crime, Trump said he felt the
same.
I believed in America first in negotiating treaties, Trump said he felt the same.
I didn't 'vote' for Trump per se, he was the proxy.
We didn't leave Him, He left us.
BarnacleBill •Sep 26, 2017 11:31 PM
Well, we can only hope that Trump gets the message. He was elected to be President of the USA, not Emperor of the World.
Quote from that Monty Python film: "He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy!" It's high time he turned back to the
job he promised to do, and drain that swamp.
napper •Sep 26, 2017 11:47 PM
A cursory background reading on Roy Moore tells me that he is one of the worst types for public office. And he might just
turn out to be like Trump -- act like an anti-swarm cowboy and promise a path to heaven, then show his real colors as an Establishment
puppet once the braindead voters put him in office.
America is doomed from top (the swarm) to bottom (the brainless voters).
Sid Davis •Sep 27, 2017 1:40 AM
When Trump won the Republican nomination, and then the Presidency it was because people were rebelling against the establishment
rulers. There is considerable disgust with these big government rulers that are working for themselves and their corporate cronies,
but not for the US population.
Trump seems to have been compromised at this point, and his support of the establishment favourite, Luther Strange is evidence
that he isn't really the outsider he claimed to be. Moore's victory in Alabama says the rebellion still has wheels, so there is some hope.
In Missouri where I live, the anti-establishment Republican contender for the upcoming US Senatorial 2018 race is Austin Peterson.
It will be interesting to see how he, and his counterparts in other states do in the primaries. Both of the current Missouri Senators
are worthless.
nevertheless -> pfwed •Sep 27, 2017 7:33 AM
I remember well the last "3-Dimensional Chess master" Obama while he too was always out maneuvering his apponents, per the
media reports...
LoveTruth •Sep 27, 2017 2:56 AM
Every now and then Trump tends to make huge blunders, and sometimes betrayals without knowing what he is doing. "Champions"-
(great leaders) do not do that.
nevertheless -> LoveTruth •Sep 27, 2017 7:16 AM
What Trump has done are disasters, and equates to treason. Selling billions of dollars of weapons the our enemies the terrorists/Saudis,
killing innocent people in Syria, and Yemen, sending more troops to Afghanistan...
But most treasonous of all was his sending DACA to "get it right", really? Congress has only one goal with immigration, amnesty,
and Chump knows dam well they will send him legislation that will clearly or covertly grant amnesty for millions and millions
of illegals, dressed up as "security".
Obama enacted DACA with the stroke of a pen, and while TRUMP promised to end it, he did NOT. Why is it when it's something
Americans want, it has to be "Constitutional", but when it comes form his banker pals, like starting a war, he can do that unilaterally.
It is epitome of self-delusion to see people twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to justify/rationalize Trump's continuing
display of disloyalty to America, and loyalty to Zionism.
Trump should always have been seen as a likely Zionist shill. He comes form Jew York City, owes everything he is to Zionist
Jewish bankers, is a self proclaimed Zionist...
YOU CAN'T BE A ZIONIST AND AN AMERICAN FIRSTER, IT IS ONE OR THE OTHER.
Either Zero Hedge is over run with Zionist hasbara, giving cover to their boy Chump, or Americans on the "right" have become
as gullible as those who supported Obama on the "left".
"... As for Bannon himself, his downfall has been fast and unceremonious: trashed by the president after he gossiped to Michael Wolff, abandoned by his deep-pocketed Mercer family funders, sacked by Breitbart, and then forced to watch as Trump indicated in a meeting earlier this week that he could sign a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Marat's downfall saw him elevated into a revolutionary martyr; Bannon has been banished into exile. ..."
"... But revolutions don't die with their figureheads. Bannonism won't either because, unlike the ethereal ideas behind liberalism and conservatism, it's found visceral real-world resonance -- among blue collars who see economic nationalism as a glimmer of hope among boarded-up plants, service-members frustrated with fruitless wars, young men flummoxed by modern feminism, right-wing activists frustrated with their political party's perceived impotence. Taunt Bannon all you like, but the imprint he leaves behind will be far larger than one spurious tell-all. ..."
"... The last blast of paleconservatism was Perot and the strong late 1990s economy halted that movement. ..."
"... The biggest thing lacking of the Bannon/Trump movement is how push back against the economic elite. Trump is governing exactly like an establishment Republican. Look at Trump/Perry ideas on saving coal which was properly turned down. This plan was unbelievably awful and not the right way for a better electric system and was simply handing Murray and First Energy a bunch money. ..."
"... Conservatism stands for stability and community. The accretions of "limited government" and "lower taxes", charming they may be as mantras, are more libertarian (Classic Liberal) than they are conservative ..."
"... A bomb-throwing Bolshevik like Bannon truly belongs on The Left, but in these days of abysmal ignorance of civics, it doesn't matter. "Bannonism" may live on, but thanks to the crackpot nature of its cobbled-together ideology, will remain a niche religion much like hard-core anarcho-libertarianism. ..."
"... Given the current atmosphere of outrage porn, willful ignorance and gleeful brutality, I do not have much hope for a Burkean conservatism to thrive, at least until after the pending social collapse ..."
"... Bannon will likely fade into oblivion via the Bourbon barrel, and the name Trump may become synonymous with "traitor" (but not like the media elite would hope). These men did not create a movement nor inspire anything. They were both savvy enough to see the political reality in this country and to give it voice. They will go, but the reality will remain. Ironically, but predictably, both men will likely be laid low by their own egos. But, so it goes ..."
"... The reality that supersedes these egotistical, narcissistic men is the fact that the traditional core of the American people have "woke" to the fact of their betrayal by the elite class to whom they have entrusted the leadership of this country for decades. They have awakened to find decay and rot throughout every American institution and to discover that these elites have enriched themselves beyond measure with the wealth of the nation at the cost of the workers and taxpayers who make that wealth possible. They have awakened to their own replacement and now realize the disdain with which they are viewed by those who would be their "masters." ..."
"... These Deplorables, white, working, taxpaying, Bible-believing, gun-owning MEN(!), are not going back into the opioid sleep of blissed out suburbia. They are now aware of the ill-hidden hatred which the elite class has for them and the future of serfdom to which these elites have fated them and their children. Gentlemen, a beast is being born out here in the hinterlands. It will not be put back in the cage ..."
Bannon is an imperfect ideologue. He has a gargantuan ego that often leads him astray, perhaps lately towards the delusion that
he himself would be a better populist messenger than the man he helped elect. But he's also hit on a paradox at the core of today's
American conservatism. Conservatives, in theory at least, look with skepticism upon grand projects and giant leaps, which too often
end up rupturing with the societal traditions they hold dear. Yet much of what conservatives support today is actually quite radical:
banning all or most abortions, rolling back the regulatory state, rejecting decades of orthodoxy on the issue of climate change,
a massive downshift of power from the federal government to states and localities, a moral ethic rooted in Christianity rather than
identity politics -- and lately questioning the "liberal international order" in favor of something more nationalist and protectionist.
The enactment of such an agenda would cause a good deal of upheaval and uncertainty, exactly the sort of void conservatives' forebears
feared most.
Some have wrangled with this contradiction by scaling back their proposals, claiming great problems can be addressed with light-touch
solutions, like child tax credits to arrest sagging birth rates. Others, much of Conservative Inc. it seems, are fine pretending
this tension doesn't exist at all. Bannon's approach has been to gleefully embrace conservatism's radical side. Disagree with him
all you like (and I do), but his is a perfectly logical position. His ascent -- some would say his transformation -- is a predictable
consequence of conservatives yearning for something increasingly distant from the modern world, just as did young people in the quietly
simmering 1950s. Indeed, there are many stylistic similarities between the radicals of today and those half a century ago: the "for
the lulz" performance art of a Milo Yiannopoulos contains an echo of the prankster Yippies, for example. Those who lack cultural
power can sell out, they can evolve, they can retreat to the catacombs -- or they can take Bannon's approach, they can transgress
and pump their fists and try to burn it all down.
Bannon's digestible binaries -- establishment versus the people, globalists versus Americans -- are easily superimposed on an
electorate that's itself divided both economically and culturally. Red states and the Rust Belt have for decades been the victims
of bad federal policy; Bannonism gives them an abstract enemy to blame, a valve for their fury. The algorithmic and library-voiced
Mitt Romney and the earnest Paul Ryan seem woefully inadequate by comparison: have those praying they run for higher office again
learned nothing? In The Constitution of Liberty , F.A. Hayek critiques conservatism by defining it as "a brake on the vehicle
of progress" and observing that a mere decrease in speed "cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving." Likewise,
while conventional taxes-and-terrorism Republican rhetoric doesn't feel like much of a heave on the ship's wheel, Bannonism furnishes
a clear vision, a real change, swords to wield, dragons to slay. Guess which one has greater appeal right now?
The modern right has always had a whiff of radicalism about it, with origins in pushback against the 60s counterculture, a second
wind in Newt Gingrich's legislative reformation, and late-life vitality in the Saul Alinsky-invoking tea party. But it's with Bannon
that the odor has become most pungent. He is an unlikely revolutionary. An
early profile from Bloomberg Businessweek
in 2015 portrays him as more of an operative than anything, determined to professionalize a conservative movement that had made too
many unforced errors. Other pre-Trump appearances found Bannon worrying about the national debt and extolling his Catholic faith.
It's a windy road from there to storming the barricades under Donald Trump's sigil, but it's one many conservatives have traveled
in recent years. The challenge for more traditional Republicans will be fashioning a new politics that quenches voters' burning thirst
for change -- a position they've arrived at themselves, not been brainwashed into by Fox News -- while circumventing Bannonism's
conflagrations and The Camp of the Saints ugliness.
As for Bannon himself, his downfall has been fast and unceremonious: trashed by the president after he gossiped to Michael Wolff,
abandoned by his deep-pocketed Mercer family funders, sacked by Breitbart, and then forced to watch as Trump
indicated in
a meeting earlier this week that he could sign a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Marat's downfall saw him elevated into
a revolutionary martyr; Bannon has been banished into exile.
But revolutions don't die with their figureheads. Bannonism won't either
because, unlike the ethereal ideas behind liberalism and conservatism, it's found visceral real-world resonance -- among blue collars
who see economic nationalism as a glimmer of hope among boarded-up plants, service-members frustrated with fruitless wars, young
men flummoxed by modern feminism, right-wing activists frustrated with their political party's perceived impotence. Taunt Bannon
all you like, but the imprint he leaves behind will be far larger than one spurious tell-all.
Matt Purple is the managing editor of The American Conservative
There is always a level of Bannonism /Paleoconservatism in the US politics but who knows how impactful it will be.
Probably the biggest issue for Bannon was Trump was elected in 2016 and our nation did not want or need a Leninist. (It
wasn't 2008 anymore) Frankly most conservatives were satisfied that HRC and Obama were not President and did not want massive changes.
The whole the people and globalist division is too simplistic and there are a lot 'People' that support free trade or relatively
open borders. (For instance I don't see the economic benefit of steel tariffs at all.)
The last blast of paleconservatism was Perot and the strong late 1990s economy halted that movement.
We still don't know how much a pushback on Trump/Bannonism will be. Trump is not popular and the House is endangered.
5) The biggest thing lacking of the Bannon/Trump movement is how push back against the economic elite. Trump is governing
exactly like an establishment Republican. Look at Trump/Perry ideas on saving coal which was properly turned down. This plan was
unbelievably awful and not the right way for a better electric system and was simply handing Murray and First Energy a bunch money.
It is a cardinal error to confuse conservatism with The Right, as much as it is to conflate liberalism with The Left.
Conservatism stands for stability and community. The accretions of "limited government" and "lower taxes", charming they
may be as mantras, are more libertarian (Classic Liberal) than they are conservative. (Thanks loads, Frank Meyer.)
A bomb-throwing Bolshevik like Bannon truly belongs on The Left, but in these days of abysmal ignorance of civics, it doesn't
matter. "Bannonism" may live on, but thanks to the crackpot nature of its cobbled-together ideology, will remain a niche religion much
like hard-core anarcho-libertarianism.
Given the current atmosphere of outrage porn, willful ignorance and gleeful brutality, I do not have much hope for a Burkean
conservatism to thrive, at least until after the pending social collapse.
Bannon will likely fade into oblivion via the Bourbon barrel, and the name Trump may become synonymous with "traitor" (but
not like the media elite would hope). These men did not create a movement nor inspire anything. They were both savvy enough to
see the political reality in this country and to give it voice. They will go, but the reality will remain. Ironically, but predictably,
both men will likely be laid low by their own egos. But, so it goes.
The reality that supersedes these egotistical, narcissistic men is the fact that the traditional core of the American people
have "woke" to the fact of their betrayal by the elite class to whom they have entrusted the leadership of this country for decades.
They have awakened to find decay and rot throughout every American institution and to discover that these elites have enriched
themselves beyond measure with the wealth of the nation at the cost of the workers and taxpayers who make that wealth possible.
They have awakened to their own replacement and now realize the disdain with which they are viewed by those who would be their
"masters."
These Deplorables, white, working, taxpaying, Bible-believing, gun-owning MEN(!), are not going back into the opioid sleep
of blissed out suburbia. They are now aware of the ill-hidden hatred which the elite class has for them and the future of serfdom
to which these elites have fated them and their children. Gentlemen, a beast is being born out here in the hinterlands. It will
not be put back in the cage.
The writer's allusion to the French Revolution is somewhat telling. The history of the West is replete with moments of savagery
and destruction directed inwardly. It will be so again. When these Deplorables turn on their keepers, it will not be pretty. The
Progressive elites who believe that they can control and shape "narratives" to harness that power are fools. The cloistered intellectuals
who believe that they can "opt" out of the coming clash are dreaming.
The traditional core of the American people are no different than their ancestors. They just don't live as close to the edge
as those folks did. But when they are backed up to that edge, when betrayal has been made clear and the institutions are revealed
for the Oz that they have become, they will recall that old hatred that still courses in the Western man's veins and will react
in ways that will chill the blood. The imaginary "crimes" with which "privileged whites" are damned by the rioting Cultural Marxists
will escape imagination and leap into reality. God help us.
Re: The last blast of paleconservatism was Perot and the strong late 1990s economy halted that movement.
Perot, for whom I voted in 1992 but not 1996, was not a paleoconservative, but rather a pragmatic centrist. Compare his position
on social issues with Pat Buchanan's (Buchanan being Mr. Paleoconservative -- and who ran in 1992 too)
Looks like Bannon is really weak in political economy. He does not even use the term neoliberalism. Go
here to read the full transcript of his speech.
One very interesting quote is ""I believe we've come partly off-track in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we're
starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the
West, a crisis of capitalism."
Notable quotes:
"... That war triggered a century of barbaric -- unparalleled in mankind's history -- virtually 180 to 200 million people were killed in the 20th century, and I believe that, you know, hundreds of years from now when they look back, we're children of that: We're children of that barbarity. This will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age. ..."
"... I believe we've come partly offtrack in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we're starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism. ..."
"... I see that every day. I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough environment. And you've had a fairly good track record. So I don't want this to kinda sound namby-pamby, "Let's all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' around capitalism." ..."
"... One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that's the capitalism you see in China and Russia. I believe it's what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it doesn't spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were seen really in the 20th century. ..."
"... The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I'm a big believer in a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that's a very big part of the conservative movement -- whether it's the UKIP movement in England, it's many of the underpinnings of the populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States. However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the "enlightened capitalism" of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost -- as many of the precepts of Marx -- and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation [that] they're really finding quite attractive. And if they don't see another alternative, it's going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of "personal freedom." ..."
Buzzfeed has the remarks of Stephen Bannon, former CEO of Breitbart News ,
and currently appointed by President Elect Trump to be his chief advisor, at a conference at
the Vatican in the summer of 2014:
Steve Bannon:
Thank you very much Benjamin, and I appreciate you guys including us in
this. We're speaking from Los Angeles today, right across the street from our headquarters in
Los Angeles. Um. I want to talk about wealth creation and what wealth creation really can
achieve and maybe take it in a slightly different direction, because I believe the world, and
particularly the Judeo-Christian west, is in a crisis. And it's really the organizing principle
of how we built Breitbart News to really be a platform to bring news and information to people
throughout the world. Principally in the west, but we're expanding internationally to let
people understand the depths of this crisis, and it is a crisis both of capitalism but really
of the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian west in our beliefs.
It's ironic, I think, that we're talking today at exactly, tomorrow, 100 years ago, at
the exact moment we're talking, the assassination took place in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand that led to the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the bloodiest century
in mankind's history. Just to put it in perspective, with the assassination that took place 100
years ago tomorrow in Sarajevo, the world was at total peace. There was trade, there was
globalization, there was technological transfer, the High Church of England and the Catholic
Church and the Christian faith was predominant throughout Europe of practicing Christians.
Seven weeks later, I think there were 5 million men in uniform and within 30 days there were
over a million casualties.
That war triggered a century of barbaric -- unparalleled in mankind's history --
virtually 180 to 200 million people were killed in the 20th century, and I believe that, you
know, hundreds of years from now when they look back, we're children of that: We're children of
that barbarity. This will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age.
But the thing that got us out of it, the organizing principle that met this, was not
just the heroism of our people -- whether it was French resistance fighters, whether it was the
Polish resistance fighters, or it's the young men from Kansas City or the Midwest who stormed
the beaches of Normandy, commandos in England that fought with the Royal Air Force, that fought
this great war, really the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right? The underlying
principle is an enlightened form of capitalism, that capitalism really gave us the wherewithal.
It kind of organized and built the materials needed to support, whether it's the Soviet Union,
England, the United States, and eventually to take back continental Europe and to beat back a
barbaric empire in the Far East.
That capitalism really generated tremendous wealth. And that wealth was really
distributed among a middle class, a rising middle class, people who come from really
working-class environments and created what we really call a Pax Americana. It was many, many
years and decades of peace. And I believe we've come partly offtrack in the years since the
fall of the Soviet Union and we're starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly,
is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of
capitalism.
And we're at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if
the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I
feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs,
but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that's starting, that will completely
eradicate everything that we've been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.
Now, what I mean by that specifically: I think that you're seeing three kinds of
converging tendencies: One is a form of capitalism that is taken away from the underlying
spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity and, really, Judeo-Christian belief.
I see that every day. I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at
Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get.
I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough
environment. And you've had a fairly good track record. So I don't want this to kinda sound
namby-pamby, "Let's all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' around capitalism."
But there's a strand of capitalism today -- two strands of it, that are very
disturbing.
One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that's the capitalism you see in China and
Russia. I believe it's what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places
like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with
these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that
is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it
doesn't spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were
seen really in the 20th century.
The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the
Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I'm a big believer in
a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that's a very big part of the conservative
movement -- whether it's the UKIP movement in England, it's many of the underpinnings of the
populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States.
However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I
call the "enlightened capitalism" of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really
looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost -- as many of
the precepts of Marx -- and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation
[that] they're really finding quite attractive. And if they don't see another alternative, it's
going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of "personal
freedom."
The other tendency is an immense secularization of the West. And I know we've talked
about secularization for a long time, but if you look at younger people, especially millennials
under 30, the overwhelming drive of popular culture is to absolutely secularize this rising
iteration.
"... "I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist," Bannon told the news outlet earlier this week. "The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f -- ed over." ..."
"... "Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe," Bannon told Mother Jones in August. "Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right? But that's just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements." ..."
"... "It's everything related to jobs," Bannon said and seemingly bragged about how he was going to drive conservatives "crazy" with his "trillion-dollar infrastructure plan." ..."
"... "With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up," he proposed. "We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution -- conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement." ..."
"... Bannon, in the Reporter interview, also gave some insight into how he viewed his political foes (presumably, liberals and the media) -- and the "darkness" he touts in fighting against them. ..."
Steve Bannon, the chief strategist and right-hand man to President-elect Donald Trump,
denied in an interview that he was an advocate of white nationalism -- and gave hints instead
about how his brand of "economic" nationalism will shake up Washington.
In The Hollywood Reporter, Bannon, the controversial former head of Breitbart News who went
on to chair Mr. Trump's presidential campaign, discussed why he believed his candidate won the
election.
"I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist," Bannon told
the news outlet earlier this week. "The globalists gutted the American working class and
created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f -- ed
over."
Bannon's appointment to the White House has drawn criticism from Democrats and several civil
liberties groups, in part because of his (and Breitbart's) strong association with
the alt-right , a political movement with strains of white supremacy.
In the past, the former Breitbart CEO has admitted the alt-right's connections to racist and
anti-Semitic agendas.
"Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the
philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe,"
Bannon told Mother Jones in August. "Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are
attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes,
right? But that's just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard
left that attract certain elements."
In the Reporter interview, Bannon challenged the notion that racialized overtones dominated
the Trump campaign on the trail. He predicted that if the administration delivered on its
election promises, "we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and
Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years."
"It's everything related to jobs," Bannon said and seemingly bragged about how he was going
to drive conservatives "crazy" with his "trillion-dollar infrastructure plan."
"With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild
everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up," he proposed. "We're just going to
throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater
than the Reagan revolution -- conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist
movement."
Bannon, in the Reporter interview, also gave some insight into how he viewed his political
foes (presumably, liberals and the media) -- and the "darkness" he touts in fighting against
them.
"Darkness is good," Bannon said. "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only
helps us when they...get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."
"... When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as a "blunt instrument for us," a man who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up twenty years." ..."
"... the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them: despite how powerful the Establishment may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and the people it rules -- for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many members of this Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have been more successful in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed, without much evidence, that undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump presidency was too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their candidate off to Arizona in the final days. ..."
"... Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading him to declare upon leaving the White House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." [ Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017] ..."
"... But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact that the current president is Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an election. Unlike GOP strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing. ..."
Throughout 2016, I would occasionally turn on the television to see how the punditocracy was
responding to the mounting
Trump tsunami . If you get most of your news online, watching cable news is frustrating.
The commentary is so dumbed down and
painfully
reflective of speaker's biases, you can always basically guess what's coming next. With a
few exceptions -- above all Ann Coulter 's famous June 19, 2015
prediction of a Trump victory on
Bill Maher -- these pundits again and again told us that Trump would eventually go away,
first after he made this or that gaffe, then after he "failed" in a debate, then after people
actually started voting in the primaries.
The most interesting cases to me: the "
Republican strategists ," brought on to CNN and MSNBC to give the audience the illusion
that they were hearing both sides: Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, Ana Navarro, Rick Wilson,
Margaret Hoover, Todd Harris.
Mike Murphy even convinced donors to hand him over $100 million to make Jeb Bush the
next president -- [
Jeb's 2016 departure draws out Mike Murphy critics , By Maeve Reston, February 22,
2016]
With campaigns and donors throwing money at these people, and the Main Stream Media touting
them, it was easy to assume they must know what they were talking about. Significantly, each of
these pundits was a national security hawk, center-right on economic issues, and just as
horrified by "
racism " and " sexism
" as their
Leftist counterparts . By a remarkable coincidence, the "
strategic " advice that they gave to Republican candidates lined up perfectly with these
positions. Their prominence was a mirage created by the fact that the MSM
handed this token opposition the Megaphone
because they did not challenge the core prejudices of the
bipartisan Ruling Class.
And of course they were all humiliated in a spectacular fashion, November 8 being only the
climax.
Joshua Green begins his book Devil's
Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by giving us a
view inside the Trump campaign on election night, before tracing Steve Bannon's path up to that
point. Reliving the journey is one of the joys of Green's work, which is mostly an intellectual
biography of Steve Bannon,
with a special focus on his relationship with Trump and the election.
Bannon
joined the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 without any previous experience in
electoral politics. But like the candidate himself, the Breitbart editor showed that he
understood the nature of American politics and the GOP base
better than Establishment Republicans. The "strategists'" supposed "expertise," "strategic
advice," and "analysis" was in reality built on a house of cards. (In fact, the
Bannon-Trump view of the electorate is closer to the consensus
among political scientists that, unlike more nationalist and populist policies,
Republican Establishment positions have relatively little popular support. [ Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyon d | Tensions Between and Within the Two
Parties, Voter Study Group, June 2017]).
Bannon at Breitbart.com gave the Republican base what it wanted. Moral: in a democracy, you
always have a chance at winning when public opinion (or at least intraparty opinion) is on your
side.
Green traces Bannon's journey from his Irish-Catholic
working-class roots and traditionalist upbringing, to his time in the Navy, at Harvard
Business School and Goldman Sachs, and finally Breitbart.com and the pinnacle of American
politics. The picture
that emerges is of a man with principles and vigor, refusing to submit to the inertia that
is part of the human condition, with enough confidence to realize that life is too short to not
make major changes when staying on the current path is not going to allow him to accomplish his
goals.
For example, Bannon originally wanted a career in defense policy, and took a job in the
Pentagon during the Reagan administration. Yet he was off to Harvard Business School when he
realized that the rigid bureaucracy
that he was a part of would not let him move up to a high-level position until he was
middle-aged. Decades later, after taking over his website upon the unexpected death of Andrew Breitbart in
2012, it would have been easy to go low-risk -- sticking to Establishment scripts, making life
comfortable for Republican elites, implicitly submitting to the taboos of the Left.
Instead , he helped turn Breitbart News into a major voice of the populist tide that has
been remaking center-right politics across the globe.
When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as
a "blunt instrument for us," a man who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up
twenty years."
From Green, we learn much about Bannon's intellectual influences. Surprisingly, although he
was raised as a Roman Catholic and maintains that faith today, we find out that Bannon briefly
practiced Zen Buddhism while in the Navy. There are other unusual influences that make
appearances in the book, including Rightist philosopher Julius
Evola and
René Guénon, a French occultist who eventually became a Sufi Muslim. Although
not exactly my cup of tea, such eccentric intellectual interests reflect a curious mind that
refuses to restrict itself to fashionable influences.
It's incorrect to call Devil's Bargain a biography. There is practically no mention
of Bannon's personal life -- wives, children. I had to Google to find out that he has three
daughters. His childhood is only discussed in the context of how it may have influenced his
beliefs and political development.
Rather, we get information on Bannon's intellectual and career pursuits and his
relationships with consequential figures such as mega-donor Robert Mercer, Andrew Breitbart and
Donald Trump.
As Bannon exits the White House and returns to Breitbart, we must hope that Bannon and the
movement he's helped to create accomplish enough in the future to inspire more complete
biographies.
But the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them:
despite how powerful the Establishment may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and
the people it rules -- for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many members of this
Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have
been more successful in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of
effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed, without much evidence, that
undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump
presidency was too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing
a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their candidate off to Arizona in the final
days.
Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading
him to declare upon leaving the White House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and
won, is over." [
Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017]
But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact
that the current president is Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it
has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an election. Unlike GOP
strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing.
In his memoir Nixon's White House Wars , Pat Buchanan writes about how, despite
playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was
mostly shut out of high-level jobs:
Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our
movement had exhibited real power in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping
Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and though we were
playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was
mostly shut out of high-level jobs:
Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our
movement had exhibited real power in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping
Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and though we were veterans
of a victorious presidential campaign, few of us had served in the executive branch. We
lacked titles, resumes, credentials Our pool of experienced public servants who could
seamlessly move into top positions was miniscule compared to that of the liberal Democrats
who had dominated the capital's politics since FDR arrived in 1933.
History repeated itself in 2016, when Donald Trump would win the presidency on a nationalist
platform but find few qualified individuals who could reliably implement his agenda.
If nationalists want to ensure that their next generation of leaders is able to effectively
implement the policies they run on, they are going to have to engage in the slow and tedious
project of working their way up through powerful institutions.
Bannon may have been and remains an "outsider" to the political Establishment. But
nonetheless, throughout his life he has leveraged elite institutions such as Harvard, Goldman
Sachs, the Republican Party, and even Hollywood in order to become financially independent and
free to pursue his political goals.
If enough of those on the Dissident Right forge a similar path, we can be sure that future
nationalist political victories will be less hollow. Jeremy Cooper is a specialist in
international politics and an observer of global trends. Follow him at @NeoNeoLiberal .
@Clyde
Wilson Is there any evidence that Trump even tried to find the right people to fill the
offices? Having dabbled ever so slightly in this process in the spring, my impression is that
there is a mechanism run largely by lawyers from the big DC law firms (presumably one for
each party) who are the gatekeepers for applicants. The result of this system, which I have
little doubt that the "Trump Team" did not try to take on (after all, they had only a couple
of months to put together the beginnings of a team, and that left little or no time replacing
The Swamp Machine ) is that the key positions throughout the administration are largely
filled with lawyers from connected law firms. After all, who better to administer the
government than lawyers -- ? -- ?
At any rate, my experience with the process was: on your marks, get set, nothing. 30 years
experience in and around federal government, but not a lawyer. Don't call us, we don't want
to talk to you. (I also made clear in my cover letter that the key motivator for my
application -- and first ever political contributions -- was Trump and his agenda. In
retrospect, this "admission" was probably a kiss of death. I was a Trumpite. Eeeewww -- -- --
(I may well not have been qualified for anything, but I'm SURE I was disqualified by my
support for Trump )
Too little, too late. Also Bannon by demonizing Russians has shown that his is a dangerous warmonger. And a weak
politician.
Notable quotes:
"... Bannon added that his comments to Wolff were "aimed at Paul Manafort," the former Trump campaign manager who has been charged as part of an investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and members of Trump's team. Manafort was also at the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Manafort, Bannon said, "should have known how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. ..."
"... Bannon released the statement after a three-day barrage of criticism from Trump and his allies. The president dubbed Bannon "Sloppy Steve." Bannon's statement also followed a CNN appearance on Sunday by Stephen Miller, the president's senior policy adviser and former Bannon ally, who eviscerated his comments to Wolff as "grotesque." ..."
The former White House aide said Donald Trump Jr. is a "patriot and a good man."
Steve Bannon backpedaled on comments to journalist Michael Wolff, whose explosive new book
sparked
a backlash against the former top Donald Trump aide over his remarks about a meeting at
Trump Tower in June 2016. According to the book, released a week early due to high demand, the
former White House strategist called the infamous meeting in New York between Donald Trump Jr.
and Russian operatives at Trump Tower "treasonous."
In a
statement to Axios on Sunday, Bannon heaped praise on Trump and his agenda, and called Don
Jr. a "patriot and a good man." "My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from
my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to
hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was
the defeat of 'the evil empire' and to making films about Reagan's war against the Soviets and
Hillary Clinton's involvement in selling uranium to them, " Bannon said in the statement.
Bannon
added that his comments to Wolff were "aimed at Paul Manafort," the former Trump campaign
manager who has been charged as part of an investigation into possible collusion between the
Russian government and members of Trump's team. Manafort was also at the 2016 Trump Tower
meeting. Manafort, Bannon said, "should have known how the Russians operate. He should have
known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends.
To reiterate, those comments (about
the meeting with the Russians) were not aimed at Don Jr." In the statement, Bannon again denied
that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. And though he did not deny any of the remarks
that were attributed to him in the book, Bannon said he regretted "that my delay in responding
to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president's
historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency."
Bannon released the statement
after a three-day barrage of criticism from Trump and his allies. The president dubbed Bannon
"Sloppy Steve." Bannon's statement also followed a CNN appearance on Sunday by Stephen Miller,
the president's senior policy adviser and former Bannon ally, who eviscerated his comments to
Wolff as "grotesque."
Earlier Sunday, Trump railed about what he called Wolff's "Fake Book" on
Twitter:
"... Economic nationalism is a term used to describe policies which are guided by the idea of protecting domestic consumption, labor and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labour, goods and capital. It is in opposition to Globalisation in many cases, or at least on questions the unrestricted good of Free trade. It would include such doctrines as Protectionism, Import substitution, Mercantilism and planned economies. ..."
"... Examples of economic nationalism include Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers", Malaysia's imposition of currency controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's controlled exchange of the Yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs and devaluation in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect domestic steel production. ..."
"... Think about what a trade war with China would do. It would crash the world economy as China tried to cash in on it US Treasury holdings with the US likely defaulting......just one possible scenario. ..."
"... Here is Bannon's latest: Bannon dismissed the far-right as irrelevant: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more." "These guys are a collection of clowns," he added. Bannon is no friend of White Nationalists. ..."
"... I think Bannon is an authentic economic nationalist, and one that Trump feels is good counsel on those matters. If this is so, then Bannon cannot be trying to provoke a trade war with China, since that would be an economic catastrophe for the US (and China and the rest of the world). I'm hoping he's playing bad cop and eventually Trump will play good cop in negotiations for more investment by China in the US and other goodies in exchange for 'well, not much' from the US. Similar to what the US dragged out of Japan in the 80s nd 90s. ..."
"... Bannon (and most of his followers) have no trust in the corporate sector as they are to a large degree Globalists - they used the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would even call them traitors. So you could call him a Nationalist. ..."
"... Bannon does not seem himself as an "ethno-nationalist". Yet his slanderous contempt for the liberal ethos/values of many Americans would tend to make one question if he can be called a Nationalist. ..."
"... If Bannon was a Zionist, he would never make the comments he does against the financial sector ..."
"... Isn't exceptionalism the same as narcissism? ..."
"... At least the concern for 10 million in Seoul (mostly missing in the discussion of other leaders) show he is not a psychopath ..."
So lets start parsing this economic nationalism that Bannon is making happen with Trump.
Economic nationalism is a term used to describe policies which are guided by the idea of protecting domestic consumption, labor
and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labour, goods
and capital. It is in opposition to Globalisation in many cases, or at least on questions the unrestricted good of Free trade.
It would include such doctrines as Protectionism, Import substitution, Mercantilism and planned economies.
Examples of economic nationalism include Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers", Malaysia's imposition of currency
controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's controlled exchange of the Yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs
and devaluation in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect domestic steel production.
Think about what a trade war with China would do. It would crash the world economy as China tried to cash in on it US Treasury
holdings with the US likely defaulting......just one possible scenario.
At least now, IMO, the battle for a multi-polar (finance) world is out in the open.....let the side taking by nations begin.
I hope Bannon is wrong about the timing of potential global power shifting and the US loses its empire status.
Here is Bannon's latest: Bannon dismissed the far-right as irrelevant: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element.
I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more." "These guys are a collection
of clowns," he added. Bannon is no friend of White Nationalists.
Bannon can be perfectly mature, adult and realist on some points and be totally blinded by biases on others - him wanting total
economic war against China is proof enough. So I don't rule out that he has a blind spot over Iran and wants to get rid of the
regime. I mean, even Trump is realist and adult in a few issues, yet is an oblivious fool on others.
Kind of hard to find someone who's always adult and realist, actually. You can only hope to pick someone who's more realist
than most people. Or build a positronic robot and vote for him.
I think Bannon is an authentic economic nationalist, and one that Trump feels is good counsel on those matters. If this is so,
then Bannon cannot be trying to provoke a trade war with China, since that would be an economic catastrophe for the US (and China
and the rest of the world). I'm hoping he's playing bad cop and eventually Trump will play good cop in negotiations for more investment
by China in the US and other goodies in exchange for 'well, not much' from the US. Similar to what the US dragged out of Japan
in the 80s nd 90s.
@ Everybody who bought into the MSM Steve Bannon promoted white supremacy and through Breitbart. Suggested you read his world
view expressed in remarks at Human Dignity Institute, Vatican Conference 2014
Progressives and Steve Bannon have something surprising in common: hating Wall Street
Pop quiz! Which major American political figure said the following:
"The 2008 crisis is really driven I believe by the greed, much of it driven by the greed of the investment banks."
"I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong."
"[N]ot one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis."
"The Republican Party "is really a collection of crony capitalists that feel that they have a different set of rules"
and are "the reason that the United States' financial situation is so dire."
In the Vatican talk, Bannon described in length and detail how he views the biggest issues of the day:
He wants to tear down "crony capitalism": "a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and
creating value for a very small subset of people.[.]
He is against Ayn Rand's version of libertarianism: "The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing,
is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism.[.]
He believes the West needs to wage "a global war against Islamic fascism": "They have a Twitter account up today,
ISIS does, about turning the United States into a "river of blood" if it comes in and tries to defend the city of Baghdad.
And trust me, that is going to come to Europe.[.]
He believes the capitalism of the "Judeo Christian West" is in crisis: "If you look at the leaders of capitalism
at that time, when capitalism was I believe at its highest flower and spreading its benefits to most of mankind, almost
all of those capitalists were strong believers in the Judeo-Christian West.[.]
He believes the racists that are attracted to Trump will become increasingly irrelevant: [.]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
this recent Bannon interview with The American Prospect will now go viral. Drudgereport headlines the WAPO spin.
Except for the selective Zion-flavored warmongering, Bannon appears to be an intelligent and thoughtful person. Also crafty. Is
he not "Trump's Brain" in the way that Rove was Bush's Brain?
Agree. I think Bannon's quite bright and very very clever and crafty.
However, if anyone believes the lies he spewed yesterday about white supremacists, let me enlighten you that that's what's
called "good PR" or something. Bannon is someone whom I hold quite responsible for contributing to the rise of White Supremacy
in the USA, which I consider a clear and present danger. Bannon's dismissive hand waving yesterday is meant to dissemble. Guess
some are willing to buy what he was selling yesterday. Not me.
The first group to call themselves Progressives were the 19th century Populists. Their mantle was adopted by T. Roosevelt and
other like-minded Republicans. Lafollette and Wallace are perhaps the best remembered Progressives--yes, FDR is portrayed as one,
but when examined really isn't: Eleanor was far more Progressive and since she was people also thought he was too. Once Wallace
was ousted from government, Democrats reverted to their old ways, although Truman did order the military to desegregate--perhaps
his only Progressive act. JFK was in the process of becoming a Progressive in the months prior to his murder. LBJ very reluctantly
made some Progressive noises in his War on Poverty that he was essentially forced into thanks to massive ethnic strife and related
riots during the 60s. But essentially since the beginning of WW2, Progressives and their goals vanished from the political landscape.
Nader brought it back to the fringe from the wilderness, but the so-called Progressive Caucus really isn't Progressive thanks
to its war promotion.
Admittedly, I don't know much about Steve Bannon; he certainly isn't a Progressive, but he doesn't seem to be a Regressive
either. The points he made at the Vatican Talk supplied by likklemore @28 are rather encouraging in an anti-Deep State manner.
So, his interaction with The American Prospect I don't see as surprising--he's seeking allies: "'It's a great honor to
finally track you [Robert Kuttner] down. I've followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when
it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it.'... Bannon explained that his strategy is to battle the trade doves inside the administration
while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes left as well as right. Hence the phone call to me." I think Kuttner
will discover Bannon will "still [be] there" after Labor Day, so he might as well make his travel plans.
I won't give you a pass. Your bias and lack of intelligence is on great display.
Read and understand as Bannon is proven right on events.
The $28 - trillion (US dollar) global bailouts in 2008 is proven to have failed. A handful on Wall Street became trillionaires
instead of being suited in special stripes.
Negative interest rates steal the retirement savings of seniors. Pensions and Insurance companies cannot meet promised payouts.
And all is fine. Corruption flourishes. Judeo-Christian moral values are not in crisis.
@12... "Bannon is a fascist" I'm not so sure. Mussolini defined fascism as being an alliance of corporate and state powers...
but Bannon (and most of his followers) have no trust in the corporate sector as they are to a large degree Globalists - they used
the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would even call them traitors. So you could call him
a Nationalist.
@ 8 as you say... Bannon does not seem himself as an "ethno-nationalist". Yet his slanderous contempt for the liberal ethos/values
of many Americans would tend to make one question if he can be called a Nationalist.
@ 9 If Bannon was a Zionist, he would never make the comments he does against the financial sector (see @28).
@28 Bannon would never call himself a Socialist, but the most logical expression of his individualist views when applied to
the business world are expressed by none other than Ayn Rand. The financial world simply got legal cover to act on the views that
he rails against. Bannon does not like what he sees when the rules he claims for himself are given to the rest of the world. Which
makes him an "Exceptionalist"??
Isn't exceptionalism the same as narcissism?
At least the concern for 10 million in Seoul (mostly missing in the discussion of other leaders) show he is not a psychopath.
"... Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked and ridiculed them. ..."
"... The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words. ..."
"... Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director, Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least. ..."
"... Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week, MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should be "investigated." ..."
"... I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in that during the Obama administration. ..."
"... Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill , in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything. . . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past." ..."
"... five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter . . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks. ..."
"... I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with that sentiment. ..."
Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the
CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked
and ridiculed them.
The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media
should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition
party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words.
Joel Simon, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told CNN that "this kind of speech not [only] undermines the work of the
media in this country, it emboldens autocratic leaders around the world." Jacob Weisberg, the head of the Slate Group, tweeted that
Bannon's comment was terrifying and "tyrannical."
Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director,
Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat
an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least.
Ever since Bannon's outburst, you can hear the media gears meshing in the effort to undermine him. In TV green rooms and at Washington
parties, I've heard journalists say outright that it's time to get him. Time magazine put a sinister-looking Bannon on its
cover, describing him as "The Great Manipulator." Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time , boasted to MSNBC that
the image was in keeping with a tradition of controversial covers that put leaders in their place. "Likewise, putting [former White
House aide] Mike Deaver on the cover, the brains behind Ronald Reagan, that ended up bringing down Reagan," he told the hosts of
Morning Joe . "So you've got to have these checks and balances, whether it's the judiciary or the press."
Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week,
MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in
the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should
be "investigated."
I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in
that during the Obama administration.
It wasn't until four years after the passage of Obamacare that a journalist reported on just how powerful White House counselor
Valerie Jarrett had been in its flawed implementation. Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill
, in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group
of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much
of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly
with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything.
. . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett
inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At
this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past."
Brill then bluntly told the president that five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter
. . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position
by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment
of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received
as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks.
I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that
if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with
that sentiment.
But the media's effort to turn Bannon into an enemy of the people is veering into hysterical character assassination. The Sunday
print edition of the New York Times ran an astonishing 1,500-word story headlined: "Fascists Too Lax for a Philosopher Cited
by Bannon." (The online headline now reads, "Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists.") The Times based this
headline on what it admits was "a passing reference" in
a speech by Bannon at a Vatican conference in 2014 . In that speech, Bannon made a single mention of Julius Evola, an obscure
Italian philosopher who opposed modernity and cozied up to Mussolini's Italian Fascists.
Trump's campaign to return manufacturing to America and repatriate profits held overseas
makes good business sense. The ravaging of America's once mighty industrial base to boost
corporate profits was a crime against the nation by unscrupulous Wall Street bankers and
short-sighted, greedy CEO's.
The basis of industrial power is the ability to make products people use. Shockingly, US
manufacturing has shrunk to only 14% of GDP. Today, America's primary business has become
finance, the largely non-productive act of paper-passing that only benefits a tiny big city
parasitic elite.
Trump_vs_deep_state is a natural reaction to the self-destruction of America's industrial base. But the
president's mania to wreck international trade agreements and impose tariff barriers will
result in diminishing America's economic and political influence around the globe.
Access to America's markets is in certain ways a more powerful political tool than
deployment of US forces around the globe. Lessening access to the US markets will inevitably
have negative repercussions on US exports.
Trump has been on a rampage to undo almost every positive initiative undertaken by the Obama
administration, even though many earned the US applause and respect around the civilized world.
The president has made trade agreements a prime target. He has targeted trade pacts involving
Mexico, Canada, the EU, Japan, China and a host of other nations by claiming they are unfair to
American workers. However, a degree of wage unfairness is the price Washington must pay for
bringing lower-cost nations into America's economic orbit.
This month, the Trump administration threatened new restrictions against 120 US trade
partners who may now face much higher tariffs on their exports to the US.
Trump is in a hurry because he fears he may not be re-elected. He is trying to eradicate all
vestiges of the Obama presidency with the ruthlessness and ferocity of Stalinist officials
eradicating every trace of liquidated commissars, even from official photos. America now faces
its own era of purges as an uneasy world watches.
I strongly doubt that there is a break from the principle that the United States of America was the world's only superpower
Notable quotes:
"... During the mandates of George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama, the documents defining their National Security Strategies were based on the principle that the United States of America was the world's only superpower. They could wage the " endless war " advocated by Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, in other words they could systematically destroy any political organisation in the already unstable areas of the planet, beginning with the " Greater Middle East ". The Presidents indicated their projects for every region of the world. All that the unified fighting Commands had to do was apply these instructions. ..."
"... He once again uses his slogan " America First! " and makes it his philosophical foundation. Historically, this formula is still associated with support for Nazism, but this is not its original meaning. It was initially a way of breaking with Roosevelt's Atlantist policy - the alliance with the British Empire in order to govern the world. ..."
During the mandates of George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama, the documents defining their National Security Strategies were
based on the principle that the United States of America was the world's only superpower. They could wage the " endless war " advocated
by Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, in other words they could systematically destroy any political organisation in the already unstable
areas of the planet, beginning with the " Greater Middle East ". The Presidents indicated their projects for every region of the
world. All that the unified fighting Commands had to do was apply these instructions.
Donald Trump's National Security
Strategy breaks almost entirely with this literature. It conserves certain of the mythological elements of these previous
mandates, but attempts above all to reposition the United States as the Republic it was in 1791 (which is to say at the moment of
compromise with the Bill of Rights ) and no longer as the Empire that it became on 11 September 2001.
The role of the White House, its diplomacy and its armed forces is no longer to rule the world, but to protect " the interests
of the people of the United States ".
In his introduction, Donald Trump marks his difference with his predecessors by denouncing the policies of " régime change " and
" world democratic revolution " adopted by Ronald Reagan and managed under successive administrations by Trotskyite senior civil
servants. He reaffirms the classic realpolitik as declared by Henry Kissinger for example, founded on the idea of " sovereign nations
".
The reader will however keep in mind that certain intergovernmental agencies of the " Five Eyes " group, (Australia, Canada, the
United States, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom), such as the National Endowment for Democracy, are still directed by Trotskyists.
Donald Trump distinguishes three types of difficulty that his country is going to have to face -
First of all, the rivalry with Russia and China;
Next, the opposition of " rogue states " (North Korea and Iran) in their respective regions;
Finally, the threat to international law embodied by the jihadist movements and transnational criminal organisations.
Although he too considers the United States to be the incarnation of Good, he does not diabolise his rivals, adversaries and enemies,
but attempts to understand them, unlike his predecessors.
He once again uses his slogan " America First! " and makes it his philosophical foundation. Historically, this formula is
still associated with support for Nazism, but this is not its original meaning. It was initially a way of breaking with Roosevelt's
Atlantist policy - the alliance with the British Empire in order to govern the world.
The reader will remember that the first cabinet of the Obama administration gave an excessive place to the members of the Pilgrim
Society (no connection with the Mont-Pelerin Society), in other words a very private club presided by Queen Elizabeth II. This was
the group which piloted the financial après-crise of 2008.
In order to guide this policy of returning to the Republican principles of 1791 and independence from British financial interests,
Donald Trump poses four pillars:
The protection
of the people of the United States, its homeland and its way of life; The prosperity of
the United States; The power of its
armies; The development
of its influence.
Thus, he does not imagine his strategy in opposition to his rivals, his adversaries and his enemies, but as a function of his
Republican and independent ideal.
In order to avoid misinterpretation, he specifies that while he may consider that the United States is an example for the world,
it is neither possible nor desirable to impose its way of life on others - particularly since this way of life could not be considered
as the " inevitable final outcome of progress ". He does not think of international relations as being the rule of the United States
over the world, but as the search for " reciprocal relations " with his partners.
The four pillars of the America First doctrine of National Security
The protection
of the people of the United States implies, above all, the restoration of the frontiers (terrestrial, aerial, maritime, spatial and
cyber-spatial) which have been progressively destroyed by the globalists.
These frontiers are intended to neutralise the use of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist and criminal groups, and also to
contain pandemics and prevent the entry of drugs or illegal immigrants. Concerning the cyber-spatial frontiers, Donald Trump notes
the necessity of securing the Internet by giving priority, successively, to National Security, Energy, the Banks, Health, Communications
and Transports. But all that remains rather theoretical.
While, since the presidency of Richard Nixon, the war against drugs had been selective, aimed not at drying up the flood of illegal
substances, but at directing it towards certain ethnic minorities, Donald Trump responds to a new need. Aware of the collapse of
life expectancy exclusively affecting white males under Barack Obama, the despair that it caused and the opioïd epidemic that ensued,
Trump considers that the fight against the cartels is a question of national survival.
Speaking of the war against terrorism, it is not clear whether he is referring to the " lone wolves " who continue to fight even
after the fall of the Caliphate, as was the case with certain groups of the Waffen SS after the fall of the Reich, or the maintenance
of the British system of jihadism. If the second hypothesis is correct, it would be a clear retraction of his declarations of intention
during his electoral campaign and the first months of his presidency. He would therefore be obliged to clarify the evolution of relations
between Washington and London, as well the consequences of this change concerning the management of NATO.
In any case, we note a strange passage from the text which states as follows - " The United States will work with their allies
and partners to dissuade and destabilise other groups which threaten the homeland - including the groups sponsored by Iran, like
the Lebanese Hezbollah ".
For all anti-terrorist actions, Donald Trump considers limited alliances with other powers, including Russia and China.
Finally, concerning the resilience of the United States, he validates the programme of " Continuity of Government ", although
it was the direct beneficiary of the coup d'Etat of 9/11. However, he states that citizens who are engaged and informed are the basis
of this system, which would seem to avert the danger of a replay of such an event.
Concerning the
prosperity of the United States , a condition for the development of his Defense programme, Donald Trump is a champion of the " American
dream ", the " minimal State ", and the theory of " trickle-down economics " (from top to bottom). He therefore conceives of an economy
based on free exchange and not financialisation. Taking the opposite point of view from the commonly-believed idea that free exchange
was an instrument of Anglo-Saxon imperialism, he affirms that it is only fair for the primary actors if the new actors accept the
rules. He claims that several states -- including China -- are profiting from this system without ever having entertained the intention
of adopting its values.
He bases himself on this idea -- and not on the analysis of the appearance of a transnational class of the super-rich -- in order
to denounce multilateral commercial agreements.
He continues by announcing the deregulation of all sectors where State intervention is unnecessary. At the same time, he is planning
the opposition to all interventions by foreign States and their nationalised businesses, which could distort fair exchanges with
the United States.
He intends to develop theoretical research and its technical applications, and to support invention and innovation. For that,
he plans for special and advantageous conditions of immigration in order to generate a " brain drain " towards the United States.
Considering the skills thus acquired, not as the means for establishing a toll-booth on the world economy via patents, but as the
motor of the US economy, he intends to create a National Security file of these techniques and to protect them in order to maintain
his advance.
Finally, on the subject of the access to sources of energy, he observes that for the first time, the United States is self-sufficient.
He warns against policies initiated in the name of global warming, which implies limiting the use of energy. Here, Donald Trump is
not talking about the financialisation of ecology, but is clearly lobbing a stone into the garden of France, promoter of the " greening
of finance ". Replacing this question in a more general context, he affirms that the United States will support any States which
are victims of energy blackmail.
Affirming that
while the United States is no longer the sole superpower, it is the dominant power, he states that his central security objective
is the maintenance of this military preeminence , in accordance with the Roman adage Si vis pacem, para bellum [
1 ].
He first observes that " China is attempting to exclude the United States from the Indo-Pacific region, to extend the reach of
its State-run economic model, and to reorganise the region to its own advantage ". According to Trump, Beijing is in the process
of building the world's second military capability (under the authority of General Xi Jinping) leaning for support on the skills
of the United States.
As for Russia, " it is seeking to re-establish its status as a great power and create spheres of influence at its borders ". To
that purpose, it is " attempting to weaken the influence of the United States in the world and separate the USA from its allies and
partners. It perceives NATO and the European Union as threats ".
This is the first analysis of the goals and means of the rivals of the United States. Contrary to the " Wolfowitz doctrine ",
the White House no longer considers the European Union as a competitor, but as the civilian wing of NATO. Breaking with the strategy
of economic sabotage of the European Union by George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, Donald Trump posits the possibility of cooperating
with his rivals (which are now Russia and China), but only from a " position of strength ".
The current period sees the return of military competition, with three players this time. Knowing the tendency of military men
to prepare for the last war, rather than trying to imagine the next, it is a good idea to rethink the organisation and allocation
of the armies while remembering that your rivals will position themselves in whatever sector they choose. We should note that it
is not in this chapter that Donald Trump evokes the Pentagon's Achilles heel, but much earlier in the text. It is in his introduction,
at a moment when the reader is absorbed in philosophical considerations, that he mentions the new breed of Russian weapons, and in
particular their capacity to inhibit the commands and controls of NATO equipment.
The Pentagon must renew its arsenal, both in quantity and in quality. It has to abandon the illusion that its technological superiority
(in reality, now overtaken by Russia) can make up for its inferiority in numbers. There follows a long study of the domains of armament,
including nuclear weapons, which have to be modernised.
Donald Trump intends to inverse the current functioning of the Defense industry. The industry currently tries to sell its products
to the Federal state -- Trump hopes that the Federal state will launch its own offers, and that the industrials will respond to these
new needs. We know that today, the Defense industry no longer has the engineers it needs to realise new projects. The failure of
the F-35 is the most striking example of this. The change for which the President is hoping therefore supposes the prior organisation
of the " brain drain " towards the United States which he has already evoked.
As far as Intelligence is concerned, he has adopted the theories of his ex-National Security advisor General Michael Flynn. He
wants to reposition not only the Defense Intelligence Agency, but the entire " Intelligence community ". The objective is no longer
being able to pinpoint, at any moment, one terrorist chief or another, but being able to anticipate the strategic evolutions of its
rivals, adversaries and enemies. This means abandoning the obsession with GPS and high-tech gadgets in order to rehabilitate analysis.
Finally, he considers the State Department to be a tool enabling the creation of a positive environment for his country, including
with his rivals. It is no longer the means of extending the interests of multinational companies, which it was under George Bush
Sr. and Bill Clinton, nor the organiser of the Empire which it became under Bush Jr. and Barack Obama. US diplomats therefore need
to regain a little political dexterity.
The chapter dedicated
to the influence of the United States clarifies the end of the " globalisation " of the " American way of life ". The United States
will not seek to impose their values on others. They will treat all people equally, and will valorise those who respect the rule
of law.
In order to encourage those countries who might wish to become partners, but whose investments are governed by the State, he plans
to offer them alternatives solutions which would facilitate the reform of their economy.
Concerning intergovernmental organisations, he announces that he will refuse to hand over the slightest part of sovereignty if
it must be shared with countries who question the constitutional principles of the USA - a direct allusion to the International Criminal
Court, for example. On the other hand, he says nothing about the extra-territoriality of US Justice, which violates the constitutional
principles of other countries.
Finally, reviewing the long tradition which came from the compromise of 1791, he affirms that the United States will continue
to support those who fight for human dignity or religious freedom (not to be confused with freedom of conscience).
It is only after this long exposé that Donald Trump addresses the regional application of his doctrine. Nothing new is announced,
apart from an alliance with Australia, India and Japan to contain China and combat North Korea.
At best we learn about two new approaches to the Middle East. Experience with Daesh has shown that the main problem is not the
Israëli question, but that of the jihadist ideology. And what Washington blames Iran for is the perpetuation of the cycle of violence
by its refusal to negotiate.
By default, the reader understands that the Pentagon has to abandon the project by Admiral Arthur Cebrowski that Donald Rumfeld
imposed on 11 September. The " endless war " is over. The tension should not only stop spreading throughout the world, but lessen
in the Greater Middle East.
Donald Trump's National Security doctrine is very solidly constructed, on the historical level (we can see the influence of General
Jim Mattis) and on the philosophical level (following ex-Special advisor Steve Bannon). It is based on a rigorous analysis of the
challenges to US power (in conformity with the work of General H. R. McMaster). It validates the State Department's budget cuts (operated
by Rex Tillerson). Contrary to the received wisdom of US journalists, the Trump administration has managed to develop a coherent
synthesis which clearly distances itself from previous visions.
However, the absence of an explicit regional strategy attests to the extent of the ongoing revolution. Nothing guarantees that
the military leaders will apply this new philosophy in their respective domains - particularly since we were able to note, only a
few days ago, the collusion between US Forces and the jihadists in Syria.
Thierry Meyssan
Also the concept of "Neoliberal jihad is valid, but it is better to call it Neoliberal World revolution as it was borrowed
from Trotskyism
Notable quotes:
"... Jihad vs. McWorld ..."
"... In the two decades since Barber's book, this conflict has seemed to play out along overtly cultural lines: with Islamic extremism representing jihad, in opposition to Western neoliberalism representing McWorld. ..."
"... Linking Brexit and Trump to global right-wing tribal nationalisms doesn't mean conflating them all, of course. ..."
"... Yet at the same time, we can't understand our 21st century world without a recognition of this widespread phenomenon of global, tribal nationalism. ..."
In his ground-breaking
1995 book Jihad vs. McWorld , political scientist Benjamin Barber posits that the
global conflicts of the early 21st century would be driven by two opposing but equally
undemocratic forces: neoliberal corporate globalization (which he dubbed "McWorld") and
reactionary tribal nationalisms (which he dubbed "Jihad"). Although distinct in many ways, both
of these forces, Barber persuasively argues, succeed by denying the possibilities for
democratic consensus and action, and so both must be opposed by civic engagement and activism
on a broad scale.
In the two decades since Barber's book, this conflict has seemed to play out along overtly
cultural lines: with Islamic extremism representing jihad, in opposition to Western
neoliberalism representing McWorld. Case in pitch-perfect point: the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks
on the World Trade Center. Yet despite his use of the Arabic word Jihad, Barber is clear that
reactionary tribalism is a worldwide phenomenon -- and in 2016 we're seeing particularly
striking examples of that tribalism in Western nations such as Great Britain and the United
States.
Britain's vote this week in favor of leaving the European Union was driven entirely by such
reactionary tribal nationalism. The far-right United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and its
leader Nigel Farage
led the charge in favor of Leave , as exemplified by a recent UKIP poster featuring a photo
of Syrian refugees with the caption " Breaking point: the EU has failed
us ." Farage and his allies like to point to demographic statistics about how much the UK
has changed in the last few decades , and more
exactly how the nation's white majority has been somewhat shifted over that time by the
arrival
of sizeable African and Asian immigrant communities.
It's impossible not to link the UKIP's emphases on such issues of immigration and demography
to the presidential campaign of the one prominent U.S. politician who is
cheering for the Brexit vote : presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. From his
campaign-launching speech about Mexican immigrant "criminals and rapists" to his proposal to
ban Muslim immigration and his "Make American Great Again" slogan, Trump has relied on
reactionary tribal nationalism at every stage of his campaign, and has received the
enthusiastic endorsement
of white supremacist and far-right organizations as a result. For such American tribal
nationalists, the 1965 Immigration Act is the chief bogeyman, the origin point of continuing
demographic shifts that have placed white America in a precarious position.
The only problem with that narrative is that it's entirely inaccurate. What the 1965 Act did
was reverse a
recent, exclusionary trend in American immigration law and policy, returning the nation to
the more inclusive and welcoming stance it had taken throughout the rest of its history.
Moreover, while the numbers of Americans from Latin American, Asian, and Muslim cultures have
increased in recent decades, all of those
communities have been part of o
ur national community from its origin points . Which is to say, this right-wing tribal
nationalism isn't just opposed to fundamental realities of 21st century American identity -- it
also depends on historical and national narratives that are as mythic as they are
exclusionary.
Linking Brexit and Trump to global right-wing tribal nationalisms doesn't mean conflating
them all, of course. Although Trump rallies have featured troubling instances of violence, and
although the
murderer of British politican Jo Cox was an avowed white supremacist and Leave supporter,
the right-wing Islamic extremism of groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram rely far more
consistently and centrally on violence and terrorism in support of their worldview and goals.
Such specific contexts and nuances are important and shouldn't be elided.
Yet at the same time, we can't understand our 21st century world without a recognition of
this widespread phenomenon of global, tribal nationalism. From ISIS to UKIP, Trump to France's
Jean-Marie Le Pen, such reactionary forces have become and remain dominant players across the
world, influencing local and international politics, economics, and culture. Benjamin Barber
called this trend two decades ago, and we would do well to read and remember his analyses -- as
well as his call for civic engagement and activism to resist these forces and fight for
democracy.
"... The real story is that the FBI, the NSA and the CIA effectively conspired to try to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. Hardly anyone in the media, mainstream or fringe, are writing about this fact and trying to rally public support for action. What is one to say when confronted with the fact that the FBI paid money to a former British spy for alleged dirt on Donald Trump that was initially commissioned by the Clinton campaign. And who is the FBI Agent paying for the dossier? Why a fellow now revealed as a Clinton partisan. ..."
"... How much of what we see is the real DJT and how much is a projected public persona? ..."
"... DJT's threat to "drain the swamp" has created fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst the swamp folk. They naturally fight back. By definition, all swamp critters must toe the neocon line else they would have been fired by previous incumbents. They are all therefore fair game for DJT. ..."
"... I admire your persistence and agree with the points you make in this and your other posts on the topic of Trump. This is an extremely important subject matter. A President was elected, lawfully, and a bunch of stupid ninnies got their panties in a knot over that and are therefore more or less willing to support a Borgist ("deep state", if you prefer) coup d'état. Said ninnies are immune to the rational arguments you present because they are not intelligent, they are hyper emotional and many of them belong to a cult called "[neo]liberalism" (or the "progressive movement", if you prefer). ..."
"... You mention briefly the Steele affair. I still find it difficult to believe that an ex-UK Intelligence Officer can get mixed up in American politics to this extent and scarcely an eyebrow raised. Surely someone's asking questions somewhere about this? The facts are clear enough, for once. ..."
"... And, off stage, a slow but powerful campaign exposing many of Trumnp's enemies as corrupt, perverted hypocrites. And, from time to time, unexpected presents like Brazile's book. But faster please ..."
"... I agree about the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has afflicted the media. I think they are suffering from O.C.T.D.: Obsessive Compulsive Trump Disorder. There are some in the media who are of the opinion that this may not be working with most Americans. ..."
"... The crucial point is not about respect for the man. It is respect for the office. All men are flawed, and high position exposes additional flaws. It is evident, to this outside observer, that Trump won "fair and square" according to the established procedures. The variety of "dirty tricks" used against him, both before the election and after, is astounding. There was a "back room" negotiation on election eve, visible in public as the long delay in final over-the-top results, and Trump's apology to his supporters for the delay, "it was complicated". ..."
"... He was smart enough to get elected, defeating a dozen professional republicans and the Democratic machinery along with the MSM. "In the end you will see that he does not live up to your expectations." I thought he was a boor and a mediocre showman. In that regard he's exceeded mine by surviving this long. ..."
"... You are correct that there is no public source yet confirming the FBI paid Steele. However, the FBI's refusal to turn over relevant documents regarding their relationship with Steele tells me there was money paid. What is indisputable is that the information in the dossier was used as a predicate to seek permission from a FISA court to go after Trump and his team. That is outrageous. ..."
"... Hillary, Bush, Obama and "the establishment" knew unconsciously not to "rock the boat". Trump was seen as too independent and uneducated in the ways of The Borg to be trusted. He had un-borg-like views like "..what the hell are we doing supporting Al Quida?" "...grab her in the pussy.." "..lets make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.." "lets get along with Russia.." "..the Media is fake and biased.." all very un-PC and un-borg-like positions. Too disruptive of the status quo. Might actually solve some problems and reduce the importance of government. ..."
"... I think the Borg determined he was N.O.K. (Not Our Kind). And he has royally pissed off the Media and he is in a death fight with the Media. ..."
"... This is increasingly my take as well -- the FBI, CIA and NSA do seem to have "conspired" to destroy Donald Trump. I finger Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice, Benjamin Rhodes, and maybe Samantha Power as being involved in the flood of illegal leaks earlier in the year that did so much to pave the way for Mueller's appointment. ..."
"... Are you aware that the Office of Inspector General has been investigating politicization of the FBI and DOJ for 11 months now? The investigation was brought about at the recommendation of certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe. Among the allegations being looked into is that DOJ/FBI have highly political agents that should have at least recused themselves from certain investigations and that their politics may have influenced the course of the investigations. ..."
"... Given the revelations around Strzok, Rhee and Weissman, on Mueller's team, you'd think we'd be hearing more about OIG case. IMO, we are about to though. ..."
"... I'm also stunned by the stupidity of the Democrats. Any liberal who believes the intelligence agencies is a fool. They've just shown us their true nature by blocking the release of several thousand pages of records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy. ..."
"... If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would in 2017 consider Fox News to be the most reliable MSM news outlet, I would have rolled around on the ground laughing hysterically. Yet it is true. I am not quite sure what I should deduce from this but I think it is something along the lines of "one cannot be too cynical about the news media". ..."
"... He certainly gives them plenty of ammunition. However, I believe a great deal of the vituperative outrage directed at him has much (possibly primarily) to do with exactly whom he bested in the general election. Not to pile on, but see David E. Solomon's comments on this thread. ..."
"... One can't underestimate the cult of personality that was so carefully crafted around Hillary Clinton for the past two decades. Their chosen strategy of identity politics only kicked it into hyper-drive over the past eight years. ..."
That sure sounds a lot like the current state of the media. We have witnessed this type of hysteria ourselves in just the last
two days. First there was the Brian Ross debacle, which entailed Ross peddling the lie that Trump ordered Flynn to contact the Russians.
That "fake news" elicited an emotional orgasm from Joy Behar on The View. She was on the verge of writhing on the floor as she prematurely
celebrated what she thought would seal the impeachment of Donald Trump. Whoops. Ross had to retract that story.
... ... ...
Watergate and "Russiagate" do share a common trope. During Watergate the Washington Post was mostly a lone voice covering the
story. Washington Post publisher at the time, Kate Graham, reportedly remarked that she was worried that none of the other papers
were covering the story. And it was an important story. It exposed political corruption and abuse of power and a threat to our democracy.
How is that in common with Russiagate? The real story is that the FBI, the NSA and the CIA effectively conspired to try to
destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. Hardly anyone in the media, mainstream or fringe, are writing about this fact and trying
to rally public support for action. What is one to say when confronted with the fact that the FBI paid money to a former British
spy for alleged dirt on Donald Trump that was initially commissioned by the Clinton campaign. And who is the FBI Agent paying for
the dossier? Why a fellow now revealed as a Clinton partisan.
It is a shame you wanted to start the discussion with such a stupid comment. I have made no representation whatsoever about the
intelligence or lack of intelligence of Trump. I have expressed nothing regarding "my expectations" for him or his policies. I
get it. You don't like the man and want to grind a meaningless axe.
How much of what we see is the real DJT and how much is a projected public persona?
There's truth and lies, but then there's just plain old bullshit which has nothing to do with either. He seems to throw a ton
of it around as a diversionary tactic. I understand the technique, but I can't see through the smoke screen to divine what he's
up to or who he really is. So I continue to dispassionately observe.
DJT's threat to "drain the swamp" has created fear, uncertainty and doubt amongst the swamp folk. They naturally fight back.
By definition, all swamp critters must toe the neocon line else they would have been fired by previous incumbents. They are all
therefore fair game for DJT.
Maybe a citation could be offered here, but there does not appear to be any support for the assertion made by the author of this
piece that "...the FBI paid money to a former British spy for alleged dirt on Donald Trump...".There were reports that the FBI
'considered' paying Steele to continue his work, ( a not altogether uncommon practice), yet within the more responsibly researched
reports it was also clearly stated that in the end the FBI did not in fact pay Steele anything for any work at all.
PT, I admire your persistence and agree with the points you make in this and your other posts on the topic of Trump. This is an
extremely important subject matter. A President was elected, lawfully, and a bunch of stupid ninnies got their panties in a knot
over that and are therefore more or less willing to support a Borgist ("deep state", if you prefer) coup d'état. Said ninnies
are immune to the rational arguments you present because they are not intelligent, they are hyper emotional and many of them belong
to a cult called "[neo]liberalism" (or the "progressive movement", if you prefer).
When you belong to a cult, you must suspend reason; make it subordinate to the hive mind. You lose all perspective. They believe
all kids of ridiculous notions that fail to withstand the most basic rational scrutiny; like Islam and feminism can be allies,
socialism would work if only it were applied correctly, if a man puts on a dress he has actually become a woman and that such
a person would make a good 11 series in the military, low skill/low IQ immigrants - legal or otherwise - are actually good for
the country......so of course they believe that a coup d'état is appropriate when the target is Trump. In their madness they have
convinced themselves that Trump is uniquely dangerous. He is going to destroy the world via ignoring global warming, tax cuts,
immigration reform, pushing the nuclear button just for fun; all of the above and maybe more. You know this, of course. You did
mention "Trump Derangement Syndrome".
As for the rest of the subject matter, personally, I feel that what with all that has been revealed about the FBI, CIA and
NSA, someone should be bringing the involved members of these agencies up on charges related to treason, sedition or whatever
legal terms are correct. Actually, these people should have their doors kicked down and be brought out in hand cuffs. Death sentences
should be on the table and should be applied when legally possible.
This is no more Watergate than a man in a dress is a woman.
The depths to which the govt, populace and values of this country have degenerated have never been more on display than in
this witch hunt. We are in very bad shape. The media is thoroughly scurrilous. Officials in bureaucracies are treasonous and have
no respect for the rule of law. Half of the citizens are insane and support the media and the traitors.
If someone doesn't at least just pull the plug on this "investigation", it's going to ruin what's left of this country. It
may be too late. A lot of ninnies are going to wake up to a very harsh reality.
From day one the Republicans were trying to impeach Bill Clinton by investigating every dark corner of the Clintons' past and
present until they could find something that would stick. Same thing with Trump except this time it goes far beyond the opposition
party to include elements of the government, most of the media and even leading members of his own party. Elections be damned,
we have an empire to maintain and he is seen by the establishment as too impulsive, unstable and so far uncontrollable to be allowed
to stay in power. While no threat to the sacred cows of Wall Street and Israel or even to drain the swamp they are terrified of
his unpredictability, hence the full court press unprecedented in American history to remove him from office. My very low opinion
of Trump doesn't blind me to the dangers inherent in this effort. \
PT - Isn't the point you've just made central? The issues here are far more important than the personalities?
I like what I've seen of our PM, Mrs May. Nice person, to my outsider's way of thinking. Doesn't alter the fact that I consider
her policies and philosophy to be hopeless. And since we're never going to meet her in the pub that's what counts. Would it not
be possible to separate things out in the same way with Trump? Set on one side the partisan arguments about his personality -
politics is not a TV show - and consider him on the basis of what he may or may not do or be able to do?
You mention briefly the Steele affair. I still find it difficult to believe that an ex-UK Intelligence Officer can get
mixed up in American politics to this extent and scarcely an eyebrow raised. Surely someone's asking questions somewhere about
this? The facts are clear enough, for once.
Actually, I think he shares many of Bismark's qualities: "a political genius of a very unusual kind [whose success] rested on
several sets of conflicting characteristics among which brutal, disarming honesty mingled with the wiles and deceits of a confidence
man. He played his parts with perfect self-confidence, yet mixed them with rage, anxiety, illness, hypochrondria, and irrationality.
... He used democracy when it suited him, negotiated with revolutionaries and the dangerous Ferdinand Lassalle, the socialist
who might have contested his authority. He utterly dominated his cabinet ministers with a sovereign contempt and blackened their
reputations as soon as he no longer needed them. He outwitted the parliamentary parties, even the strongest of them, and betrayed
all those ... who had put him into power. By 1870 even his closest friends ... realized that they had helped put a demonic figure
into power.[6]"-wiki
I think, I hope, I believe, I persuade myself that all is unfolding as it should. Mueller turns up nothing but further examples
of officials pimping themselves out to foreign governments; meanwhile revelations of bias on his team; meanwhile chewing away
at the Fusion GPS thing (one of the key pillars); meanwhile investigation of the FBI. And, off stage, a slow but powerful
campaign exposing many of Trumnp's enemies as corrupt, perverted hypocrites. And, from time to time, unexpected presents like
Brazile's book. But faster please
I agree about the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has afflicted the media. I think they are suffering from O.C.T.D.: Obsessive
Compulsive Trump Disorder. There are some in the media who are of the opinion that this may not be working with most Americans.
I saw two pieces this morning from BBC and The New York Times:
Perhaps this is the start of a change or a recognition that the MSM's habitual crying wolf behavior is not resonating with
Main Street. I can only hope, but I stopped watching the national news long ago.
The crucial point is not about respect for the man. It is respect for the office. All men are flawed, and high position exposes
additional flaws. It is evident, to this outside observer, that Trump won "fair and square" according to the established procedures.
The variety of "dirty tricks" used against him, both before the election and after, is astounding. There was a "back room" negotiation
on election eve, visible in public as the long delay in final over-the-top results, and Trump's apology to his supporters for
the delay, "it was complicated".
That truly is water under the bridge, and at least must be so, if you wish to preserve
your republic. You all have the right to withhold consent and trash what you and your fathers and grandfathers have achieved.
Most will not like the outcome. But I sincerely hope that you, each and collectively, instead will choose the positive aspects
of this model:
"... that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed."
The ABC story had to be "clarified" given they originally reported Flynn had contacted the Russians DURING the election when in
fact it was AFTER the election. The story had consequences on the stock market:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4129355-cost-fake-news-s-and-p-500
This all happened on the eve of the passage of Trump's tax cuts and it seemed timed to hurt the stock market. It may even possibly
have torpedoed the tax cuts by putting into question Trump's legal standing as president.
I detest Trump as a person but still acknowledge that he is our current President. I will continue to fight against the implementation
of his policies and work hard to to try to insure he does not win a second term. Other than that in 3 more years the American
people will have an opportunity to judge his performance and make a decision on his worthiness to continue as President. That
is as it should be.
Trump has taken some hard shots, some deserved and some not. That is the nature of our current political system. When Trump
traveled the nation proclaiming Obama was not American born and thus an illegitimate President is also an example of "all is fair
in War and politics".
He was smart enough to get elected, defeating a dozen professional republicans and the Democratic machinery along with
the MSM. "In the end you will see that he does not live up to your expectations." I thought he was a boor and a mediocre showman.
In that regard he's exceeded mine by surviving this long.
You are correct that there is no public source yet confirming the FBI paid Steele. However, the FBI's refusal to turn over
relevant documents regarding their relationship with Steele tells me there was money paid. What is indisputable is that the information
in the dossier was used as a predicate to seek permission from a FISA court to go after Trump and his team. That is outrageous.
is this doom-and-gloom or hope-assaulting-experience? Am guessing that the only thing he has shares with Old Otto is a preference
for the classic method of donning trousers.
OOPS! there's this (was reminded of it by the hyperventilatory "breaking news" about Blackwater/Erik Prince):
Bismarck held von Holstein in high esteem, and when the latter went to him with his plan for establishing a vast organization
of almost universal spying, the Chancellor of the new German Empire immediately grasped the advantages he could obtain from
it. ....
Von Holstein ... had one great ambition; that of knowing everything about everybody and of ruling everybody through fear
of the disclosures he could make were he at any time tempted to do so. ....
The German Foreign Office knew everything and made use of everything .... In the Prussian Intelligence Department as Holstein
organized it there was hardly a person of note or consequence in Europe about whom everything was not known, including, of
course, his weaknesses and cupboard skeletons. And this knowledge was used when necessary without any compunction or remorse.
....
His first care, whenever an individual capable at a given moment of playing a part, no matter how humble, in the great drama
attracted his attention, was to ferret out all that could be learned about him or her. With few exceptions he contrived to
lay his finger on a hidden secret. Once this preliminary step had been performed to his satisfaction, the rest was easy. The
unfortunate victim was given to understand that he would be shamed publicly at any time, unless . . . unless . . .
As this has been the SOP of Karl Rove (presumably), of Jedgar, and before that [__fill in the blanks___], the only thing unprecedented
about the Prince/Blackwater story is the disregard for omerta.
DISCLAIMER: The Princess Radziwill who published the passage on von Holstein was an opportunistic swashbucklereuse type and
[guessing] would have been so even in less horrifically interesting times.
My humble opinion on what is going on. "The Borg" are individuals whose self-interest is tied to perpetuating "business as usual"
in Washington DC. FBI agents, CIA, NSA need domestic and foreign conflict to aggrandize and justify their positions. They do not
want our national problems solved...god forbid, budgets, salaries, bonuses, future contracting and consulting jobs might be reduced
or eliminated.
Hillary, Bush, Obama and "the establishment" knew unconsciously not to "rock the boat". Trump was seen as too independent
and uneducated in the ways of The Borg to be trusted. He had un-borg-like views like "..what the hell are we doing supporting
Al Quida?" "...grab her in the pussy.." "..lets make Jerusalem the capital of Israel.." "lets get along with Russia.." "..the
Media is fake and biased.." all very un-PC and un-borg-like positions. Too disruptive of the status quo. Might actually solve
some problems and reduce the importance of government.
I think the Borg determined he was N.O.K. (Not Our Kind). And he has royally pissed off the Media and he is in a death
fight with the Media.
I find the whole idea that "Deutsche Bank has branches in Russia and lends money to Russian borrowers, therefore Russians control
Deutsche Bank" idea to be comical.
I have clients who also regularly borrow money from Deutsche Bank. Are they now Russians? Are they controlled now by Russians?
Do Russians control them? What role does DB play in all this web of control?
If I have my mortgage at the same bank as a slum lord/toxic waste generator/adult bookstore owner/CIA operative, am I now his
puppet?
Asking for a friend.
Does nobody understand how banking law works? (in Germany and the US, banks are forbidden to lend to any client or client group
in an amount that would give the borrower de facto control over the operations of the bank). Of course the smarter conspiracy
theorists understand this. Any stick to beat a dog.
This is increasingly my take as well -- the FBI, CIA and NSA do seem to have "conspired" to destroy Donald Trump. I finger
Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice, Benjamin Rhodes, and maybe Samantha Power as being involved in the flood of illegal leaks earlier
in the year that did so much to pave the way for Mueller's appointment.
What I fail to understand is why Democrats are
sitting back and cheering as these agencies work together to destroy a duly elected President of the USA. Does anyone really believe
that if these agencies get away with it this time they will stop with Trump?
All these agencies are out of control and are completely unaccountable.
Are you aware that the Office of Inspector General has been investigating politicization of the FBI and DOJ for 11 months
now? The investigation was brought about at the recommendation of certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe.
Among the allegations being looked into is that DOJ/FBI have highly political agents that should have at least recused themselves
from certain investigations and that their politics may have influenced the course of the investigations.
Given the revelations around Strzok, Rhee and Weissman, on Mueller's team, you'd think we'd be hearing more about OIG case.
IMO, we are about to though.
I'm also stunned by the stupidity of the Democrats. Any liberal who believes the intelligence agencies is a fool. They've
just shown us their true nature by blocking the release of several thousand pages of records relating to the assassination of
President Kennedy. If they can't allow the truth to come out after 54 years, they surely can't be trusted to be truthful
about today's information.
Fox News, which has been fairly reliable of late, reported last night that the FBI OIG report will be finalized and made public
sometime in the next 4-5 weeks.
If someone had told me 5 years ago that I would in 2017 consider Fox News to be the most reliable MSM news outlet, I would
have rolled around on the ground laughing hysterically. Yet it is true. I am not quite sure what I should deduce from this but
I think it is something along the lines of "one cannot be too cynical about the news media".
He certainly gives them plenty of ammunition. However, I believe a great deal of the vituperative outrage directed at him
has much (possibly primarily) to do with exactly whom he bested in the general election. Not to pile on, but see David E. Solomon's
comments on this thread.
One can't underestimate the cult of personality that was so carefully crafted around Hillary Clinton for the past two decades.
Their chosen strategy of identity politics only kicked it into hyper-drive over the past eight years.
Still, this phenomenon existed long before Trump, The Politician, and even before Obama and his own cult. Many of these
people were able to put their expectations on hold for eight long years. Obama was a result they could at least live with temporarily
- " Just eight more years, and then they owe her. "
They had their very structures of reality built around a certain outcome, which didn't come to pass. So, the disappointment
was all the more bitter when they realized that their waiting was in vain. That's a tidal wave of cognitive dissonance unleashed
by that unimaginable (for some) occurrence of her defeat. He didn't put paid to Martin O'Malley or even Bernie Sanders. He vanquished
The Queen. That sort of thing never goes down lightly.
" As I've said before, I think Trump only ran for President for 1) ego, and 2) he knows he will have access to billions
of dollars of business deals once he leaves office, with the cachet of having been President.
You might as well assert that lions only hang out around watering holes because 1) there's water there, and 2) gazelles and
zebras have to drink water. Can you point me to one President from living memory who did not 1) run for the Office at least partially
out of ego, and 2) take advantage in his subsequent "private life" of these exact perks of having held the Office? I ask seriously,
because it seems you are pining for a nobility in presidential politics which to my recollection hasn't existed for at least three
generations. Cincinnatus, they ain't. Maybe Ike, but anyone else is a real stretch.
"... What is your take on this fellow Peter P. Strzok II? His back history is purportedly Georgetown, Army Intelligence (his father PP Strzok I is Army Corp of Engineers), and was until recently deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI with focus on Russia and China. ..."
"... He is the fellow who altered Comey's draft to read "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent", he interviewed HRC, Mills, Abedin (and gave the latter two immunity); he pushed for the continued payment of Steele in the amount of $50,000 for further Dossier research in the face of some resistance (cf James Rosen); ..."
"... he also interviewed Flynn, and for most of the first half of 2017 and for all of 2016 appears to have been the most important and influential agent working on the HRC-Trump-Russia nexus. James Rosen suggests he has CIA connections as well. ..."
"... He certainly would have had CIA connections if he was involved in CI activities targeting Russian and China. ..."
What is your take on this fellow Peter P. Strzok II? His back history is purportedly Georgetown, Army Intelligence (his
father PP Strzok I is Army Corp of Engineers), and was until recently deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI with focus
on Russia and China.
He is the fellow who altered Comey's draft to read "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent", he interviewed
HRC, Mills, Abedin (and gave the latter two immunity); he pushed for the continued payment of Steele in the amount of $50,000
for further Dossier research in the face of some resistance (cf James Rosen);
he also interviewed Flynn, and for most of the first half of 2017 and for all of 2016 appears to have been the most important
and influential agent working on the HRC-Trump-Russia nexus. James Rosen suggests he has CIA connections as well.
The dude has also no internet presence. There is not much information out there on a person who seems to be pretty influential
in DC / FBI / Foreign Intel circles.
He screwed up, and a lawyer, sent texts, and now is gone. Does he strike you as fishy at all, or is this kind of stuff pretty
common for people in his field and position.
I know nothing of him other than what is in the press but his partisan interference in investigations appears to be a blot
on the honor of the FBI but then I am old fashioned. pl
WJ,
I first learned about this man from a comment of David Habakkuk (in an earlier post) and was curious to learn more about him.
As you point out, ´internet is not your friend´ in his case. Your comment gives so far the most information about his doings.
Thank you. According to David Habakkuk that surname is polish, but it possibly be other slavic origin as well ( possibly Jidish
?)
Given Strzok's career, I wouldn't expect to find much, if anything, about him on the internet. If he spent his career working
"in the shadows," he rightly would have stayed off the internet. He certainly would have had CIA connections if he was involved
in CI activities targeting Russian and China. Anyone actively working in a classified environment would be grossly negligent
to allow himself to be plastered all over the internet. Why do you think I still use a light cover of TTG just to post here years
after retiring? It's just force of habit.
I was glad to hear that Mueller banished him to HR as soon as his anti-Trump emails were discovered. If he stayed, he would
have cast an ugly shadow over the Mueller investigation. It's much like the partisan shadow extending over much of the NY FBI
office. Their pro-Trump/anti-Clinton stance was notorious. I also think the FBI should review the entire Clinton email server
file in light of this.
Don't know how bureaucracies work in DC. Remembering how placement in HR was a goal for activists. HR is obscure and unglamorous
- how is it banishment for someone with an agenda who works in the shadows?
An interesting article on John McCain. I disagree with the contention that McCain hid knowledge that many American POWs were left
behind (undoubtedly some voluntarily choose to remain behind but not hundreds ). However, the article touched on some ideas that
rang true:
Today when we consider the major countries of the world we see that in many cases the official leaders are also the leaders
in actuality: Vladimir Putin calls the shots in Russia, Xi Jinping and his top Politburo colleagues do the same in China, and
so forth. However, in America and in some other Western countries, this seems to be less and less the case, with top national
figures merely being attractive front-men selected for their popular appeal and their political malleability, a development that
may eventually have dire consequences for the nations they lead. As an extreme example, a drunken Boris Yeltsin freely allowed
the looting of Russia's entire national wealth by the handful of oligarchs who pulled his strings, and the result was the total
impoverishment of the Russian people and a demographic collapse almost unprecedented in modern peacetime history.
An obvious problem with installing puppet rulers is the risk that they will attempt to cut their strings, much like Putin
soon outmaneuvered and exiled his oligarch patron Boris Berezovsky.
One means of minimizing such risk is to select puppets who
are so deeply compromised that they can never break free, knowing that the political self-destruct charges buried deep within
their pasts could easily be triggered if they sought independence. I have sometimes joked with my friends that perhaps the best
career move for an ambitious young politician would be to secretly commit some monstrous crime and then make sure that the hard
evidence of his guilt ended up in the hands of certain powerful people, thereby assuring his rapid political rise.
The gist is that elite need a kill switch on their front men (and women).
Seems to be a series of pieces dealing with Vietnam POWs: the following linked item was interesting and provided a plausible explanation:
that the US failed to pay up agreed on reparations…
Remarkable and shocking. Wheels within wheels – this is the first time I have ever seen McCain's father connected with the infamous
Board of Inquiry which cleared Israel in that state's attack on USS LIBERTY during Israel's seizure of the Golan Heights.
Another stunning article in which the author makes reference to his recent acquisition of what he considers to be a reliably authentic
audio file of POW McCain's broadcasts from captivity. Dynamite stuff. The conclusion regarding aspiring untenured historians is
quite downbeat:
Also remarkable; fantastic. It's hard to believe, and a testament to the boldness of Washington dog-and-pony shows, because this
must have been well-known in insider circles in Washington – anything so damning which was not ruthlessly and professionally suppressed
and simply never allowed to become part of a national discussion would surely have been stumbled upon before now. Land of the
Cover-Up.
"... "President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said
that this absurdity should have ended much earlier ," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters after the phone call. ..."
"... The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to the
YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal.
Despite that, supply for the YPG continued. In total over 3,500 truckloads were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the
YPK received some 120 armored Humvees , mine clearance vehicles and other equipment. ..."
"... The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made.
The Washington Post writes : "Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and
uncertain what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from
the National Security Council." ..."
"... The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support its occupation of north-east Syria, The intent
of the occupation is , for now, to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change": ..."
"... When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called
Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument
that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S. announced to arm the YPG directly without the cover of
the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa. ..."
"... A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic Turkman Talaf Silo, recently defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish
government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The
whole concept is a sham. ..."
"... Sometimes it's hard to see if Trump actually believed what he was saying about foreign policy on the campaign trail -- but
either way it doesn't matter much as he seems incapable of navigating the labyrinth of the Deep State even if he had in independent
thought in his head. I don't expect US weapons to stop making their way into Kurdish hands as they try to extend their mini-Israel-with-oil
foothold in Syria. But it would certainly be a welcome sight if the US left Syria alone for once! ..."
"... Trump personally sent General Flynn to recruit back Erdogan and the Turks right before the election. Flynn wrote his now infamous
editorial "Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support" and published in "The Hill". http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/305021-our-ally-turkey-is-in-crisis-and-needs-our-support
..."
"... But if you know the role he played for Trump in the campaign and then the post-election role as soon to be NSC advisor, you
will see that Trump was sending him to bring Turkey back into the fold after the coup attempt by CIA, Gulen and Turkey's AF and US State
Dept failed. ..."
"... Trump wanted to prevent the Turkish Stream. It was a huge rival to his LNG strategy. All these are why Flynn did what he did
for Trump. Now Trump has to battle CIA and State, as well as the CENTCOM-Israeli plans for insurgencies in Syria. It's not just the
Kurd issue or the other needs of NATO to hold the bases in Turkey. It's the whole southwest containment of Russian gas and Russian naval
power, and the reality of sharing the Mediterranean as well as MENA with the Bear. ..."
"... Furthermore, I've always been suspicious of Erdogan's 'turn' toward Russia. Many have suspected that the attempted coup was
staged by Erdogan (with CIA help?) so as to enable Erdogan to remain in office. IMO Erdogan joined the 'Assad must go!' effort not just
because he benefited from the oil trade but because he leans toward Sunnis (Surely he was aware of the thinking that: the road to Tehran
runs through Damascus .) ..."
President Trump is attempting to calm down the U.S.
conflict with Turkey . The
military junta in the White House has different
plans. It now attempts to circumvent the decision the president communicated to his Turkish counterpart. The result will be more
Turkish-U.S. acrimony.
Yesterday the Turkish foreign minister surprisingly
announced a phone call
President Trump had held with President Erdogan of Turkey.
United States President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke on the phone on Nov. 24 only days after
a Russia-Turkey-Iran summit on Syria, with Ankara saying that Washington has pledged not to send weapons to the People's Protection
Units (YPG) any more .
"President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said
that this absurdity should have ended much earlier ," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters after the phone call.
Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited
in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!
12:04 PM - 24 Nov 2017
During the phone call Trump must have escaped his minders for a moment and promptly tried to make, as announced, peace with Erdogan.
The issue of arming the YPG is really difficult for Turkey to swallow. Ending that would probably make up for the
recent NATO blunder of presenting the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Atatürk and Erdogan himself as enemies.
The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to
the YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been
recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal. Despite that, supply for the YPG continued.
In total over
3,500 truckloads
were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the YPK received
some 120 armored Humvees ,
mine clearance vehicles and other equipment.
The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made.
The Washington Post
writes : "Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and uncertain
what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from the
National Security Council."
The White House finally released what the Associated Presscalled :
a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of "pending adjustments to the military support
provided to our partners on the ground in Syria."
Neither a read-out of the call nor the statement AP refers to are currently available on the White House website.
The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support
its
occupation of north-east Syria, The intent of the occupation is , for now,
to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change":
U.S. officials have said they plan to keep American troops in northern Syria -- and continue working with Kurdish fighters --
to pressure Assad to make concessions during peace talks brokered by the United Nations in Geneva, stalemated for three years
now. "We're not going to just walk away right now," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week.
To solidify its position the U.S. needs to further build up and strengthen its YPG mercenary forces.
When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called
Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument
that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S.
announced
to arm the YPG directly without the cover of the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa.
The YPG had been unwilling to fight for the Arab city unless the U.S. would provide it with more money, military supplies and
support. All were provided. The U.S. special forces, who control the YPG fighters, directed an immense amount of aerial and artillery
ammunition against the city. Any potential enemy position was destroyed by large ammunition and intense bombing before the YPG infantry
proceeded. In the end few YPG fighters died in the fight. The Islamic State was let go or eliminated from the city but
so was the city of Raqqa . The intensity
of the bombardment of the medium size city was at times ten
times greater than the bombing in all of Afghanistan. Airwarsreported :
Since June, an estimated 20,000 munitions were fired in support of Coalition operations at Raqqa . Images captured by journalists
in the final days of the assault show a city in ruins
Several thousand civilians were killed in the indiscriminate onslaught.
The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is defeated. It no longer holds any ground. There is no longer any justification to further
arm and supply the YPG or the dummy organization SDF.
But the generals want to continue to do so to further their larger plans. They are laying grounds to circumvent their president's
promise. The Wall Street Journal seems to be the only outlet to
pick up on the subterfuge:
President Donald Trump's administration is preparing to stop sending weapons directly to Kurdish militants battling Islamic State
in Syria, dealing a political blow to the U.S.'s most reliable ally in the civil war, officials said Friday.
...
The Turkish announcement came as a surprise in Washington, where military and political officials in Mr. Trump's administration
appeared to be caught off-guard. U.S. military officials said they had received no new guidance about supplying weapons to the
Kurdish forces. But they said there were no immediate plans to deliver any new weapons to the group. And the U.S. can continue
to provide the Kurdish forces with arms via the umbrella Syrian militant coalition
The "military officials" talking to the WSJ have found a way to negate Trump's promise. A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic
Turkman Talaf Silo, recently
defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its
political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The whole concept is a sham.
But the U.S. needs the YPG to keep control of north-east Syria. It has to continue to provide whatever the YPG demands, or it
will have to give up its larger scheme against Syria.
The Turkish government will soon find out that the U.S. again tried to pull wool over its eyes. Erdogan will be furious when he
discovers that the U.S. continues to supply war material to the YPG, even when those deliveries are covered up as supplies for the
SDF.
The Turkish government released
a photograph showing
Erdogan and five of his aids taking Trump's phonecall. Such a release and the announcement of the call by the Turkish foreign minister
are very unusual. Erdogan is taking prestige from the call and the public announcement is to make sure that Trump sticks to his promise.
This wide publication will also increase Erdogan's wrath when he finds out that he was again deceived.
Posted by b on November 25, 2017 at 12:14 PM |
Permalink
Sometimes it's hard to see if Trump actually believed what he was saying about foreign policy on the campaign trail -- but
either way it doesn't matter much as he seems incapable of navigating the labyrinth of the Deep State even if he had in independent
thought in his head. I don't expect US weapons to stop making their way into Kurdish hands as they try to extend their mini-Israel-with-oil
foothold in Syria. But it would certainly be a welcome sight if the US left Syria alone for once!
Some
interpret this act on Election eve as a pecuniary fulfillment by Flynn of a lobbying contract (which existed).
But if you know the role he played for Trump in the campaign and then the post-election role as soon to be NSC advisor,
you will see that Trump was sending him to bring Turkey back into the fold after the coup attempt by CIA, Gulen and Turkey's AF
and US State Dept failed.
Flynn understood the crucial need for US and NATO to hold Turkey and prevent the Russians from getting Erdogan as an ally for
Syria and the Black Sea, the Balkans and Mediterranean as well as Iran, Qatar and Eurasia. Look at what has transpired between
Turkey and Russia since. Gas will be flowing through the Turkish Stream and Erdogan conforms to Putin's wishes.
Trump wanted to prevent the Turkish Stream. It was a huge rival to his LNG strategy. All these are why Flynn did what he
did for Trump. Now Trump has to battle CIA and State, as well as the CENTCOM-Israeli plans for insurgencies in Syria. It's not
just the Kurd issue or the other needs of NATO to hold the bases in Turkey. It's the whole southwest containment of Russian gas
and Russian naval power, and the reality of sharing the Mediterranean as well as MENA with the Bear.
Flynn was on it for Trump. And the IC and State want him prosecuted for defying their efforts to replace Erdogan with a stooge
like Gulen. It looks like Mueller is pursuing that against the General.
Its not a problem for US to drop Kurds if they are no longer needed, BUT for now they are essential for US/Israel/Saudi goals,
therefore you can bet 100% Kurds support will continue. Trump's order (he hasn't made it official either) will be easily circumvented.
The real question is, what Resistance will do with the backstabbing Kurds? It wont be easy to make a deal while Kurds
maintain absurd demands and as long as they have full Axis of Terror support.
Go Iraq's way like they reclaimed Kirkuk? US might have sitten out that one, I doubt they'll allow this to happen in Syria
as well, unless they get something in return.
While America's standard duplicity of saying one thing while doing the opposite has been known for decades, they have been able
to play games mainly because of the weakness of the other actors in the region.
The tables have turned now, but America still thinks it holds top dog position.
Wordplay, semantics and legal loopholes wont be tolerated for very long, and when hundreds of US boots return home in body bags
a choice will have to be made - escalate, or run away.
Previous behavior dictates run away, but times have changed.
A cornered enemy is the most dangerous, and the USA has painted itself into a very small corner...
Gee. While reading B's article what got to my mind is: "Turkey is testing the ground". Whatever Trump said to Erdogan on the phone,
it seems to me that the Turks are playing a card to see how the different actors in the US that seems to follow different agendas
will react. If Turkey concludes that the US will continue to back YPG, it's split from the US and will be definitive.
Erdogan is shifting away from US/NATO. He even hinted today that he might talk to Assad. That's huge! I wouldn't be surprised
if Turkey leaves NATO sooner than later. And if it's the case, it will be a major move of a tectonic amplitude.
Trump.. "Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited
in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!"
Surely by now Erdogan must realise that whatever the US President says and promises will be circumvented by the State Department,
the Pentagon, the 17 US intel agencies (including the CIA and the NSA) and rogue individuals in these and other US government
departments and agencies, and in Congress as well (Insane McCain comes to mind)? Not to mention the fact that the Israeli government
and the pro-Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill exercise huge influence over sections of the US government.
If Erdogan hasn't figured out the schizoid behaviour of the US from past Turkish experience and the recent experience of Turkey's
neighbours (and the Ukraine is one such neighbour), he must not be receiving good information.
Though as Jean says, perhaps Erdogan is giving the US one last chance to demonstrate that it has a coherent and reliable policy
towards the Middle East.
Well, the US policy has been coherent and reliable in the last years. It enhanced local conflicts, supported both sides at
the same time but with different intensities. Whoever wins would be "our man". Old stuff since the Byzantine period. It always
takes a lot of time to prove the single actions that were done. In most cases we learn about it years later. The delay is so big
and unpleasant that quite a number of folks escapes to stupid narratives that explain everything in one step, and therefore nothing.
By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type of Arabic
nationalism illegitimate?
The Kurds (PKK basically) are only necessary to give a "face" to the force the US is trying to align in E. Syria. The "fighting"
against ISIS (if there really was any) is coming to a close. The Chiefs of ISIS have been airlifted to somewhere nearby, and the
foreign mercenary forces sent elsewhere by convoy. ALL the valuable personnel have now become "HTS2" with reversible vests. These,
plus the US special forces are the basis of a new armed anti-Syrian force. (Note that one general let slip that there are 5'000
US forces in E-Syria - not the 500 spoken of in the MSM).
So Trump may well be correct in saying that the Kurds (specifically) will not get any more arms - because they have other demands
and might make peace with the Syrian Government, to keep at least some part of their territorial gains. The ISIS "bretheren" and
foreign mercenaries do not want any peaceful solution because it would mean their elimination.. So The CIA and Pentagon will probably
continue arms supplies to "HTS2" - but not the Kurds.
(ex-ISIS members; Some are from Saudi Arabia, Qatar - the EU and the US, as well as parts of Russia and China. They are not
farming types but will find themselves with some of the best arable land in Syria. Which belonged to Syrian-arabs-christians-Druzes-Yadzis
etc. Who wil want their properties back.)
Note that the US forces at Tanf are deliberately not letting humanitarian help reach the nearby refugee camp. Starvation and
deprivation will force many of the younger members to become US paid terrorists.
thanks b.. i tend to agree with @4 jean and @5 jen... the way i see it, there is either a real disconnect inside the usa where
the president gets to say one thing, but another part of the establishment can do another, or trump has made his last lie to turkey
here and turkey is going to say good bye to it's involvement with the usa in any way that can be trusted.. seems like some kind
of internal usa conflict to me at this point, but maybe it is all smoke and mirrors to continue on with the same charade.. i mostly
think internal usa conflict at this point..
Odd that no one has mentioned the fact the US was behind the attempted coup, where Erdogan was on a plane with two rogue Syrian
jets that stood down rather than execute the kill shot. I have read opinion that the fighter pilots were "lit up" by Russian missile
batteries and informed by radio they would not survive unless they shut down their weapons targeting immediately. This is probably
a favour Putin reminds Erdogan of on a regular basis, whenever Erdo tries to play Sultan. The attempted coup/asassination also
shows Erdogan exactly how much he can trust the US/Zionists at any level.
And Edrogan must also know Syria was once at least partly in the US-orbit, as Syria was the destination for many well-documented
US-ordered rendition/torture cases. It is probable Mossad (or their proxy thugs) killed Assad's father and older brother, so Erdo
knows he's better relying on Putin than Trumpty Dumbdy.
Erdogan is about to make a u-turn toward Syria. He is furious at Saudi Arabia for boycotting its ally Qatar, for talking about
owning Sunni Islam and by the continuous support of Islamists and Sunni Kurds in Syria.
Erdogan is preparing the turkish public opinion to a shift away from the USA-Israeli axis. This may get him many points in the
2019 election if the war in Syria is stopped, most Syrian refugees are back, Turkish companies are involved in the reconstruction
and the YPG neutralized. Erdogan has 1 year and half to make this to happen. For that he badly needs Bashar al Assad and his army
on his side.
Therefore he is evaluating what is the next move and he needs to know where the USA is standing about Turkey and Syria. Until
now the messages from the USA are contradictory yet Erdogan keeps telling his supporters that the USA is plotting against Turkey
and against Islam. Erdogan's reputation also is been threatened by the outcome of Reza Zarrab's trial in the US where the corruption
of his party may be exposed.
That is why Erdogan is making another check about the US intentions before Erdogan he starts the irreversible shift toward
the Iran-Russia (+Qatar and Syria) axis.
missing in this analysis is oil gas ... producers, refiners, slavers, middle crooks, and the LNG crowd :Israel, Fracking, LNG
and wall street... these are the underlying directing forces that will ultimately dictate when the outsiders have had enough fight
against Assad over Assad's oil and Assad's refusal to allow outsiders to install their pipelines. Until then, gangland intelligence
agencies will continue the divide, destroy and conquer strategies sufficient to keep the profits flowing. The politicians cannot
move until the underlying corruptions resolve..
The word 'byzantine' has been used for centuries to describe the intricate and multi-leveled forms of agreement, betrayal, treachery
and achievement among the shifting power brokers in the region. The US alone has three major and another three minor players at
work - often fighting each other. If however, it thinks it can outplay people whose lives are steeped in such a living tradition,
it is sadly deluded and will one day be in for a very rude surprise. Even the Russians have had difficulty navigating that maze.
When confronted with such a 'Gordian knot' of treachery and shifting alliances, Alexander the Great drew his sword and cut
through it with a vision informed by the sage Socrates as taught by Aristotle.
Despite claiming to represent such a western heritage, the US has no such Socratic wisdom, no Aristotelian logic, and no visionary
leadership that could enable it to do what Alexander did. Lacking this, it is destined to get lost in its' own hubris, and be
consumed by our current version of that region's gordian knot.
'...By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type
of Arabic nationalism illegitimate?..'
...showing that he either knows only the crap spouted by wikipedia...or nothing at all about the Baath party...
...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism...[an obvious oxymoron
to be pan-national and 'nationalist' at the same time...]
Of course there is always a 'better way'...right Hausmaus...?
The Baath socialism under Saddam in Iraq was no good for anyone we recall...especially women, students, sick people etc...
A 'better way' has since been installed and it is working beautifully...all can agree...
Same thing in Libya...where the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was no good for anyone...
Of course everyone wanted the 'Better Way'...all those doctoral graduates with free education and guaranteed jobs...a standard
of living better than some European countries...etc...
Again...removing the 'socialist' Kadafi has worked out wonderfully...
We now have black African slaves sold in open air markets...where before they did all the broom pushing that was beneath the
dignity of the Libyan Arabs...
...and were quite happy to stay there and have a job and paycheck...instead of now flooding the shores of Italy in anything
that can float...
Oh yes...why would anyone in Syria want to be governed by the socialist Baath party...?
...especially the Kurds...who just over the border in Turkey are not even recognized as humans...never mind speaking their
own language...
I'd really hoped that Donald Trump® would be the "outsider" that both the MSM and he have been insisting he is for the past couple
of years. Other than the Reality TV Show faux conflicts with which the MSM entertains us nightly, I see no such "rogue" Administration.
This say one thing, and do the other has been US foreign policy forever.
Recall, for instance that on February 21, 2014, Obama's State Department issued a statement hailing Ukrainian President Yanukovych
for signing an agreement with the "pro-democracy Maidan Protest" leaders in which he acquiesced to all of their demands.
Then, on February 22, 2014, the US State Department cheered the "peaceful and Constitutional" coup after neo-nazis stormed
the Parliament.
A few months later, Secretary of State Kerry hailed the Minsk Treaty to end the war in Ukraine. Later that day, Vickie Nuland
said there was no way her Ukies would stop shelling civilians, and sure enough they didn't (until they'd been on the retreat for
weeks, and came whimpering back to the negotiations table).
A couple years later, Kerry announced that the US and Russia would coordinate aerial assaults in Syria. The next day, "Defense"
Secretary Carter said, "no way," and within a week or so, we "accidentally" bombed Syrian forces at Deir ez Zoir for over an hour.
From my perspective, they keep us chasing the next squirrel, while bickering amongst each other about each squirrel. But the
wolves are still devouring the lambs, with only the Bear preventing a complete extinction.
What we know with at least some level of confidence...
Dump is not the 'decider'...the junta is...he's just a cardboard cutout sitting behind the oval office desk...
And he's got no one to blame but himself...he came in talking a big game about cleaning house and got himself cleaned out of
being an actual president...
This was inevitable from the moment he caved on Flynn...the only person he didn't need to vet with the senate...and a position
that wields a lot of power...
This was his undoing on many levels...not only because he faced a hostile deep state and even his own party in congress with
no one by his side [other than Flynn]...
...but because it showed that he had no balls and would not stand by his man...
This is not the stuff leaders are made of...
The same BS we see with Turkey is playing out with Russia on the Ukraine issue...
Now the junta and their enablers in congress want to start sending offensive arms to Ukraine...Dump and his platitudes to Putin...no
matter how much he may mean it...mean nothing...he's not in charge...
I think that Jean @4 has the best take on this: Erdoğan went very public on Trump's "promise" in a classic put-up-or-shut-up challenge
to the USA.
Either the word of a POTUS means something or it doesn't, and if it doesn't then Turkey is going to join Russia in concluding
that the USA as simply not-agreement-capable.
Erdoğan will then say "enough!!!", give the USA the two-finger-salute, and then take Turkey out of NATO.
And the best thing about it will be that McMaster, Kelly and Mathis will be so obsessed with playing their petty little games
that they won't see it coming.
It's hard to tell what Erdoğan is doing or intending other than that he is navigating something - objective TBD. It'll be interesting
to see if he constrains the use of Incirlik airbase should the US keep arming the YPG/PKK forces. Airpower is the enabler (sole
enabler, IMO) of the/any Kurdish overreach inside Syria. Seems like Erdoğan holds the ace card in this muddle but has yet to play
it.
Seems like Turkey has more than one card to play. A commenter on another site mentioned recently that the US really doesn't
want Erdogan to have that S-400 system from Russia. Got me thinking, could Russia have deliberately loaded Erdogan's hand with
that additional card to help him negotiate with the US?
Turkey may well leave NATO and as others have pointed out, this would be a game changer far beyond the matter of the US's illegal
presence in NE Syria. This possibility brings immense existential gravitas to Erdogan's position right now. He could ask
for many concessions at this point, not to leave. And from the Eurasian point of view, it doesn't matter if he leaves or stays,
while from the western view, it matters greatly.
Would the US give up Syria, in order to keep Turkey in NATO? It's a western dichotomy, not one that affects Asia. It would
be simple to throw S-400 at that dynamic to watch it squirm.
The plays the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
- Hamlet
As the endgame plays out, Erdogan's conscience may be revealed.
b has made the point that the partition that US-led proxy forces have carved out is unsustainable. But it would be sustainable
if Erdogan can be convinced to allow trade via Turkey.
For that reason, I thought Trump's ceasing direct military aid to the Kurds made sense as it provided Erdogan with an excuse
to allow land routes for trade/supply. Erdogan can argue that he wants to encourage such good behavior and doesn't want to make
US an enemy (Turkey is still a NATO country).
Furthermore, I've always been suspicious of Erdogan's 'turn' toward Russia. Many have suspected that the attempted coup
was staged by Erdogan (with CIA help?) so as to enable Erdogan to remain in office. IMO Erdogan joined the 'Assad must go!' effort
not just because he benefited from the oil trade but because he leans toward Sunnis (Surely he was aware of the thinking that:
the road to Tehran runs through Damascus .)
Hasn't Erdogan's vehement anti-Kurdish stance done R+6 a disservice? It seems to me that it has helped USA to convince
Kurds to fight for them and has also been a convenient excuse for Erdogan to hold onto Idlib where al Queda forces have refuge.
If Erdogan was really soooo angry with Washington, and soooo dependent on Moscow, then why not relax his anti-Kurdish
stance so as to bring Kurds back into the Syrian orbit?
Jackrabbit @20:
Erdogan may feel that if he relaxed his stance against the Syrian Kurds, it could embolden Turkish Kurds to further pursue their
agenda. It would also make him appear weak towards his supporters.
Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he? It would be the stupidest chess move ever? He's in the club and they can't
kick him out. He can cause all the trouble he wants and hobble that huge machine that is the western alliance. He will not get
EU membership, but he has his NATO ID CARD and that ain't bad. Erdo now knows that the poor bastard Trumps is WORTHLESS that he
is a toothless executive in name only. This is a wake up call, if I were Erdo, I would be very afraid of the USA and it's Syria,
MENA policy. It is being run by LUNATICS and is a slow moving train wreak. So for now, Erdo must be looking at Moscow, admiring
Putin for this is a man who has his shit together and truly knows how to run a country. Maybe even a sense of admiration and more
respect for Putin is even present. If I were Erdo, I'd double down in my support for Russia's Syria policy.
You do not get it:
„...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism..."
According to this ideology the coherence of a society comes from where? And who is excluded if one applies it?
So your contribution is just a rant using rancidic rhetoric tools. But I will not call you „flunkerbandit". My advice is to move
to this area and have a look into such a society from a more close position. Armchair type of vocal leadership does not help.
@23 "Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he?"
I guess one possible reason would be this: as long as Turkey remains in NATO then he is obliged to allow a US military presence
in his country, and that's just asking for another attempt at a military coup.
After all, wasn't Incirlik airbase a hotbed of coup-plotters during the last coup attempt?
"when the Syrian settlement is achieved, Syria's democratic forces will join the Syrian army." "When the Syrian state stabilizes, we can say that the Americans did what they said, then withdraw as they did in Iraq and
set a date for their departure and leave."
Nothing new here, nothing good either. Kurds so far are keeping up their demands of de-facto independence under fig-leaf of
"we are part of federalised Syria" with weak central government and autonomous Kurds. Thats how US plan to castrate Syria. Russia
offered cultural autonomy, Kurds rejected.
As for Americans "withdrawing" willfully, it never happened. Iraq had to kick them out, and then US used ISIS and Kurds to
get back in.
As for Syria's stabilization part, US is doing everything in its power to prevent it.
@Yeah Right #26
Turkey is not obliged to keep foreign troops in their country to remain in NATO. De Gaulle invited the US to leave France in 1967
but is still a member of NATO
@31 France actually withdrew from NATO in 1966. It remained "committed" to the collective defence of western Europe, without being,
you know, "committed" to it.
So, yeah, France kicked all the foreign troops out of France in 1967, precisely because its withdrawal from NATO's Integrated
Military Command meant that the French were no longer under any obligation to allow NATO troops on its soil.
But France had to formally withdraw from that Command first, and the reason that de Gaulle gave for withdrawing were exactly
that: remaining meant ceding sovereignty to a supra-national organization i.e. NATO Integrated Military Command.
That France retained "membership" of NATO's political organizations even after that withdrawal was little more than a fig-leaf.
After all, NATO's purpose isn't "political", it is "military".
"The Decider" is Trump's apparent self image. He can't be enjoying the Presidency and the controls exerted upon him by others
among the "Deep State" (whom I suppose have effectively cowed him into behaving via serious threats).
If he already had money and power, as it appears that he had, he gained little by taking the crown. He has less power because
he is now controlled by a number of forces (CIA, NSA, Media, MIC and etc.) as he remains under constant assault by his natural
opposition.
Big mistake dumping Flynn.
Now you take another kind of asshole in the person of Obama - a guy that had nothing - you have a malleable character who enjoys
the pomp and circumstance. Really didn't need any persuading to do anything required of him.
Here is a recent report from the Turkish Prime Minister supporting Trump's "lie" about ending support for the Kurds....what will
history show occured?
ISTANBUL, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that his country is expecting the United
States to end its partnership with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People's Protection
Units (YPG).
"Since the very beginning, we have said that it is wrong for the U.S. to partner with PKK's cousin PYD and YPG in the fight
against Daesh (Islamic State) terrorist group," Yildirim told the press in Istanbul prior to his departure for Britain.
Ankara sees the Kurdish groups as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting against the Turkish government
for over 30 years, while Washington regards them as a reliable ground force against the Islamic State (IS), also known as Daesh.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday spoke to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the phone, pledging not to
provide weapons to the YPG any more, an irritant that has hurt bilateral ties, according to the Turkish side.
Yildirim noted that Washington has described it as an obligation rather than an option to support the Kurdish groups on the
ground. "But since Daesh (IS) is now eliminated then this obligation has disappeared," he added.
It would be nice if Erdogan when withdrawing from NATO (Assuming he does this in the next 12-18 months) would say something like.
"We really like President Trump - and we trust his word implicitly. The problem is, although we trust his word, we know
he is not in control so his word is useless and best ignored. Though of course - we still trust he means well."
That would be a nice backhander to hear from Erdopig.
Speculation about Turkey leaving NATO seems farfetched. Turkey has NATO over a barrel. It has been a member for decades and what
would it gain by leaving? Nothing. By staying it continues to influence and needle at the same time. Turkey will only leave when
NATO throws it out, which isn't going to happen.
Perestroika and Trump_vs_deep_state has one important thing in common -- they arose out of deep crisis of the
Soviet Society and the US neoliberal society, correspondingly
Notable quotes:
"... The reasoning of Gorbachev's program of perestroika -- as an attempt to both transcend tired Soviet orthodoxies while remaining loyal to the underlying assumptions of the regime -- also explains the attraction of Trump_vs_deep_state to many conservative intellectuals, voters, and activists. Trump_vs_deep_state gives its followers the allure of reckoning with the conservative movement's inadequacies while remaining faithful to its underlying assumptions about economics and the role of the state. ..."
"... For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a nation whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a formerly rich institutional fabric ..."
"... When Bannon calls for Americans to understand themselves as citizens with "certain responsibilities and obligations," it's a subtle -- if incomplete and disingenuous -- recognition that the vocabulary of "liquid modernity" cannot rescue us from the very fruits it created. ..."
"... The Hayekian claim that any language of social justice commences a perilous journey towards serfdom was perhaps necessary to combat midcentury sirens of collectivism. But today it is more often representative of an age fearful of placing demanding claims upon our lives ..."
"... Someone else at TAC asked a similar question, and the answer is, no: Trump is no Gorbachev. If anything he is our Boris Yeltsin. And no, that is not intended as a compliment. MEOW , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:07 am Good points. Gorby was a realist like the Chinese. They could not depress a people's living standards with an inferior system of exchange, production, and distribution. The word was out about living standard differences. The one-world movement is very different. It means to disable all our traditions and differences (Happy Holidays for Merry Christmas – rewriting history etc) in order to allow a different cabal to prevail in this artificially created vacuum. Mac61 , says: November 15, 2017 at 6:46 am Gorbachev said we must set aside all ideology and look at all things through the light of morality. Trump is not capable of that. Bannon tried to ally Trump_vs_deep_state with Judeo-Christian morality. That project seems incomplete at the moment. Egypt Steve , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:26 am I suppose if you compare any two things, you can find some points of similarity somewhere. M1798 , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:32 am You ask for a more expansive welfare state, but didn't Make the case that our current welfare state does any public good. Food stamps and disability payments subsidize mothers to not keep the father around and fathers to not work to provide for their families. We have job training programs, yet you fail to make the case that they serve any long term good. And even our most popular welfare programs, social security and Medicare, are financially unsustainable. You wrote this article as if the GOP has legislated in the same way as their rhetoric, yet the we saw the failure to repeal Obamacare as proof that this isn't true. Dan Green , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:39 am I subscribe to what Hayek coined, the road to serfdom. Once The Social Democratic Welfare State is fully implemented , as we witness today, the state cannot make it work. Currently the model is subsidized with debt. John , says: November 15, 2017 at 10:49 am If there were an award in journalism for the hottest of takes, this might be a strong finalist for this year's. Otherwise LOL. vern , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:38 am Trump is none of the above. His only purpose in government was for his own ego gratification and to increase his wealth. He is a puppet for whoever is close enough for him to pull his strings. His favorite world leaders all happen to be autocrats who care little about civil liberties or human rights. He cares about wins and losses (ego) He is not religious, it is just a smoke screen he has put up so he can hide his worse tendencies and use it to block criticism. spite , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:57 am People that write these kind of articles just never get it (actually they probably do but cannot say these things openly). It has to do with race, whether you like this reason or not – this is the underlying fundamental issue at play here. Being replaced by another people is not going to sit well with some, one would think this is stating the obvious but it seems that the fear to broach this topic makes people come up with all kinds of reasonings that simply do not admit the truth of this. I know that anything to do with race causes so called conservatives to have abject fear (even this comment has a high chance of being censored), but you simply cannot ignore this anymore. Alex , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:59 am Oh, please. I am from the former Soviet Union. I know who Gorbachev was. He was a democrat, Trump is a dictator. Gorbachev was able to talk and listen to people, Trump is very good in insulting and blaming people. I can continue forever. They have nothing in common as human beings. connecticut farmer , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:34 pm " in which the state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared life together, where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in which solidarity and justice are indeed tangible things." This phrase unfortunately constitutes a blemish on an otherwise fine and thoughtful article. Exactly what does the phrase "limited but essential expression of our shared life together" mean? "Limited" by what? What "great common enterprise"? What "solidarity"? Ours is a country where commonality of purpose–to the extent that it has ever existed in the first place– appears to be vanishing at an exponential level. Lots of questions. No answers. polistra , says: November 15, 2017 at 1:10 pm Obama is more like Gorbachev. The last attempt to rebrand the old system, hoping to make it more palatable. Trump may turn out to be more like Yeltsin if he starts doing SOMETHING. So far the fake image of "Trump" is causing all sorts of reactions and changes, but the actual Trump has done nothing at all. He just emits meaningless noises, handing his enemies free ammunition. ..."
TAC'
s own Rod Dreher recently
highlighted an American professor's exchange with an African diplomat, who compared Donald
Trump to Mikhail Gorbachev. Just as the last Soviet premier unwittingly became "the man who
destroyed a superpower," Trump in this view is recklessly squandering the United States' global
position. But upon reflection, the analogy holds for another reason: Whatever Trump's own
mixture of "irritable mental gestures," Trump_vs_deep_state -- as articulated by Steve Bannon, Laura
Ingraham, Michael Anton & Company -- can be read as a sort of perestroika for the
American Right.
A reader may naturally look warily at the comparison. Can one discern a link between the
rhetoric of Breitbart and Gorbachev's exhortation, "to reject obedience to any dogma, to think
independently, to submit one's thoughts and plans of action to the test of morality"? However
reaching, the comparison may allow us to discern why debates over immigration and trade now
capture the conservative imagination in a way not reducible to "white identity politics" or
reflexive loyalty to the president.
The reasoning of Gorbachev's program of perestroika -- as an attempt to both
transcend tired Soviet orthodoxies while remaining loyal to the underlying assumptions of the
regime -- also explains the attraction of Trump_vs_deep_state to many conservative intellectuals, voters,
and activists. Trump_vs_deep_state gives its followers the allure of reckoning with the conservative
movement's inadequacies while remaining faithful to its underlying assumptions about economics
and the role of the state. The appeal of nationalist rhetoric is not reducible to
nativism, though it might be for some. Instead, Bannon's program offers conservatives a safe
exit ramp from self-critical thinking, allowing them to both grapple with an erosion of work
and community among America's economic losers, while maintaining most of an existing right-wing
economic program.
In a 1987 message to the Communist Party's Central Committee, Gorbachev flaunted the Soviet
order for its "conservative inclinations, inertia, and desire to brush aside everything that
didn't fit into habitual patterns." This is the same critique offered by the Jacksonian Right
of the conservative establishment. "The whole enterprise of Conservative Inc.," wrote
Michael Anton in his famous "Flight 93 Election" essay, "reeks of failure. Its sole recent and
ongoing success is its own self-preservation."
For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a
nation whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a
formerly rich institutional fabric Laura Ingraham's description of "a working class hammered by
globalization" would not seem foreign to readers of Our Kids, Hillbilly Elegy, or
Janesville . At its most tone-deaf, the Right responds with incantations to
"rekindle the rugged individualism of America's founding, frontiers, and Constitution." But
even those on the center-right with sincere empathy frequently offer only small-ball politics.
For all their merits ,
a modest increase of the Child Tax Credit, repeal of occupational licensing, vouchers for
improved geographic mobility, and moral exhortations for coastal elites to escape their bubble
do not match the gravity of the moment. In a certain way, the Bannonite call for the wall and
ripping up trade agreements is a rebellion against a purely technocratic politics without
boldness of purpose. When Bannon calls for Americans to understand themselves as citizens
with "certain responsibilities and obligations," it's a subtle -- if incomplete and
disingenuous -- recognition that the vocabulary of "liquid modernity"
cannot rescue us from the very fruits it created.
Trade and immigration are becoming the signature benchmarks for this new movement. Yet the
Jacksonian shift allows conservatives to still maintain their aversion to a strong, active
welfare state, an institution all other Western center-right parties have come to terms with.
Limiting the fluid movement of goods and people, in this view, will accomplish the same goals
as a state modeled on social or Christian-democratic purposes: We do not need to expand child
tax credits or pursue ambitious investments of retraining and vocational education. All our
struggling labor markets
demand is "stopping the importation of cheap labor." At the same time, we can press ahead
to repeal Obamacare and the tentacles of the administrative state, for economic nationalism can
ameliorate our social problems far better than any program arising out of the Washington
cesspool. Perhaps this strategy explains why, according to
Pew Research , the president maintains far more support among "Core Conservatives" than
"Country First" and "Market Skeptic" Republicans. The Trump revolution is ultimately not a
decisive schism from old-time William F. Buckley-style fusionism, no matter what both
supporters and Never Trumpers allege.
Systematic free-marketers may point out accurately how Trump_vs_deep_state can be just as economically
redistributive as any welfare program. This is all true, but to most conservative activists,
all this subtle redistribution and subsidizing looks far more hidden than paid-family leave or
public investments in early childhood or prenatal care. In other words, Trump_vs_deep_state's attraction
derives not from its wholesale rejection of traditional American conservatism, but its
potential to keep its core tenets of the right alive -- even as neoliberalism's inadequacies
suggest what is needed is a more vigorous discussion of what conservatism means in the public
sphere.
If Trump_vs_deep_state's fundamental attraction to most conservative writers and activists derives from
its ability to revise but sustain their movement, it is difficult to see how it will be to
evolve into a credible governing program. This is not because a more hawkish line on
immigration and trade is a fundamental betrayal of the "liberal world order." Indeed, one need
only read
Paul CollierGeorge BorjasMichael
Lind ,
Peter Skerry , or Dani
Rodrik to find sustained, reasonable critiques of the establishment consensus on these
matters.
But none of these authors would present their heterodox dissents as singular solutions for
restoring the American (or Western) social contract. Just as Gorbachev's ambition was not to
revitalize Russia but the Soviet Union, so is Trump_vs_deep_state not a program to save the Republic, or
even a more narrow "Middle America." Despite the Jacobin rhetoric, the Trump_vs_deep_state of Bannon,
Anton, and Ingraham is ultimately a rearguard maneuver to preserve a conservative movement
whose even devoted partisans recognize has not aged gracefully since 1989. To keep it alive,
wrecking the "globalist" consensus on immigration and trade must be pursued, regardless of the
absence of any discernible benefit for the white working class.
What would a true revolution for American conservatism look like? It should start with the
(early) thought of George Will, who wrote in the New Republic that, "if conservatism is to engage itself with the way we live now, it
must address government's graver purposes with an affirmative doctrine of the welfare state."
Conservatives must "come to terms with a social reality more complex than their slogans," where
equality of opportunity is assumed as given. The Hayekian claim that any language of social
justice commences a perilous journey towards serfdom was perhaps necessary to combat midcentury
sirens of collectivism. But today it is more often representative of an age fearful of placing
demanding claims upon our lives .
The Right must again recover the
wisdom held by Disraeli, Churchill, and the (early) domestic neoconservatives, in which the
state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared life together,
where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in which solidarity
and justice are indeed tangible things. Accepting this truth will be a harder project than
tightening the border and combating Chinese mercantilism, worthy though such things may be. But
it will be far more revolutionary, even historic, than anything the present Trumpian revolution
offers.
David Jimenez, a recent graduate of Bowdoin College and a Fulbright Scholar in Romania,
works on campus outreach at a Washington think-tank.
Good points. Gorby was a realist like the Chinese. They could not depress a people's living
standards with an inferior system of exchange, production, and distribution. The word was out
about living standard differences. The one-world movement is very different. It means to
disable all our traditions and differences (Happy Holidays for Merry Christmas –
rewriting history etc) in order to allow a different cabal to prevail in this artificially
created vacuum.
Gorbachev said we must set aside all ideology and look at all things through the light of
morality. Trump is not capable of that. Bannon tried to ally Trump_vs_deep_state with Judeo-Christian
morality. That project seems incomplete at the moment.
You ask for a more expansive welfare state, but didn't Make the case that our current
welfare state does any public good. Food stamps and disability payments subsidize mothers to
not keep the father around and fathers to not work to provide for their families. We have job
training programs, yet you fail to make the case that they serve any long term good. And even
our most popular welfare programs, social security and Medicare, are financially
unsustainable. You wrote this article as if the GOP has legislated in the same way as their
rhetoric, yet the we saw the failure to repeal Obamacare as proof that this isn't true.
I subscribe to what Hayek coined, the road to serfdom. Once The Social Democratic Welfare
State is fully implemented , as we witness today, the state cannot make it work. Currently
the model is subsidized with debt.
Trump is none of the above. His only purpose in government was for his own ego gratification
and to increase his wealth.
He is a puppet for whoever is close enough for him to pull his strings. His favorite world
leaders all happen to be autocrats who care little about civil liberties or human rights.
He cares about wins and losses (ego) He is not religious, it is just a smoke screen he has
put up so he can hide his worse tendencies and use it to block criticism.
People that write these kind of articles just never get it (actually they probably do but
cannot say these things openly). It has to do with race, whether you like this reason or not
– this is the underlying fundamental issue at play here. Being replaced by another
people is not going to sit well with some, one would think this is stating the obvious but it
seems that the fear to broach this topic makes people come up with all kinds of reasonings
that simply do not admit the truth of this. I know that anything to do with race causes so
called conservatives to have abject fear (even this comment has a high chance of being
censored), but you simply cannot ignore this anymore.
Oh, please. I am from the former Soviet Union. I know who Gorbachev was. He was a democrat,
Trump is a dictator. Gorbachev was able to talk and listen to people, Trump is very good in
insulting and blaming people. I can continue forever. They have nothing in common as human
beings.
" in which the state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared
life together, where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in
which solidarity and justice are indeed tangible things."
This phrase unfortunately constitutes a blemish on an otherwise fine and thoughtful
article. Exactly what does the phrase "limited but essential expression of our shared life
together" mean? "Limited" by what? What "great common enterprise"? What "solidarity"? Ours is
a country where commonality of purpose–to the extent that it has ever existed in the
first place– appears to be vanishing at an exponential level.
Obama is more like Gorbachev. The last attempt to rebrand the old system, hoping to make it
more palatable.
Trump may turn out to be more like Yeltsin if he starts doing SOMETHING. So far the fake
image of "Trump" is causing all sorts of reactions and changes, but the actual Trump has done
nothing at all. He just emits meaningless noises, handing his enemies free ammunition.
"For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a nation
whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a formerly rich
institutional fabric."
But Trump might already be betraying it, as this article on banking (de)regulation
suggests. It doesn't bode will for what the tax reform bill would mean for the 80% in the
bottom quintiles of the population.
Unfortunately the entrenched social democratic welfare state will not lead to serfdom but to
a dysfunctional society. This is the lesson from independent india which has no political
party representing individualistic policies. The current Hindu nationalist party in power
caters to Hindu sentiments but a redistributive economic policy. As an outsider i see USA
following the same path with islands of functionality sustaining barely, the rest. Hopefully
the author would join in a length discussion with me on this
There is some important to note "cognitive dissonance" here: if Trump is as stupid as appears from his current policies why in
the past he was insightful enough to understand important events in proper light? Something here does not compute...
Notable quotes:
"... Trump was bright enough to build up a billion dollar business empire, to win the Republican nomination against the wishes of most the the Republican establishment, and to win the election over the Clinton/Establishment machine. ..."
"... He was bright enough to note immediately after the 9/11 false flag the absurdity of aspects of what became the official narrative; ..."
"... And his anti-NWO strong emphasis on national sovereignty, and upon taking office his immediate repudiation of the nation-state disempowering and democracy-defeating TPP, are imo evidence of combining bright and gutsy. ..."
"... And he has been bright and gutsy enough to directly take on mass media bs and to call out, as no other promenent person has, the 'fake news', the mass media propaganda system; and playfully, and rather brightly, offers his direct line to the public via twitter. ..."
"... And along with Putin, Trump has earned more mass media and establishment invective, attacks, and condemnation than just about anyone in my living memory. So he must be doing something right. ..."
"... When someone is referred to as "not the brightest bulb", this is a cliché way of denoting stupidity in someone else, but it is a often a somewhat perilous joust, suggesting a suspect self-inflation. As far as not being well informed, that of course depends on what specific matters are being referred to. It has been said that a bunch of highly intelligent people with access to all sorts of information bombed Indochina mercilessly for years; for. as the highly intelligent and overflowing with information Dr. Kissinger noted, basically nothing. ..."
"... I listened to Trump carefully during his campaign speeches. He'd deliver a long "stream of consciousness" sentence that seemed to go all over the place. But when he'd finished the sentence you realised he'd in fact covered all the points he needed to make. And had done so while at the same time picking up and factoring in the audience response. I think he may be very bright indeed and quick on his feet. ..."
"... His policies? I think we have to accept one unpalatable fact. An American politician who doesn't ostentatiously support Israel doesn't get to be an American politician, if that's not a circular way of saying it. Since that to a lesser extent is the case in England as well - you saw the trouble Corbyn got into recently - one either has to isolate oneself from political discussion or just accept that most politicians of any importance here or in the States will be defective in that respect. That sounds heartless, given what the Palestinians are going through, and given what Israel's neighbours are going through; but ceasing to strive for a little because we cannot have more is even less acceptable. ..."
"... One final point. You've seen the re-election in Germany of Mrs Merkel - no idea how since none of the people I meet in Germany would have dreamed of voting for her, but she's still there. You've seen a dead-beat government elected in the UK as well. And in France you've seen the election of Macron! In America that pattern was broken. I think it might have been a fluke - I have relatives in the States who are dyed in the wool Democrats but who just couldn't stomach the candidate they put up, and it seems there were many like them. But fluke or not they now have a President who, judging by the way they attack him, is an opponent of the type of policies that have led us to our present pass. He seems to have pretty well the entire American establishment and the media against him so he may not get that far. But surely a slim chance of getting out of the hopeless mess that is our politics in the West at present is better that the certainly of sinking further into it? ..."
Trump was bright enough to build up a billion dollar business empire, to win the Republican nomination against the wishes
of most the the Republican establishment, and to win the election over the Clinton/Establishment machine.
He was bright enough to note immediately after the 9/11 false flag the absurdity of aspects of what became the official
narrative; and for example to question the safety of the deluge of vaccines that kids especially are being subjected to,
while simultaneously there is an unprecedented 'epidemic' of autism and asthma in children.
And his anti-NWO strong emphasis on national sovereignty, and upon taking office his immediate repudiation of the nation-state
disempowering and democracy-defeating TPP, are imo evidence of combining bright and gutsy.
And he has been bright and gutsy enough to directly take on mass media bs and to call out, as no other promenent person
has, the 'fake news', the mass media propaganda system; and playfully, and rather brightly, offers his direct line to the public
via twitter.
And along with Putin, Trump has earned more mass media and establishment invective, attacks, and condemnation than just
about anyone in my living memory. So he must be doing something right.
When someone is referred to as "not the brightest bulb", this is a cliché way of denoting stupidity in someone else, but
it is a often a somewhat perilous joust, suggesting a suspect self-inflation. As far as not being well informed, that of course
depends on what specific matters are being referred to. It has been said that a bunch of highly intelligent people with access
to all sorts of information bombed Indochina mercilessly for years; for. as the highly intelligent and overflowing with information
Dr. Kissinger noted, basically nothing.
"Trump is not the brightest bulb and he is not well informed. I dislike nearly all of his policies."
"b" - I listened to Trump carefully during his campaign speeches. He'd deliver a long "stream of consciousness" sentence
that seemed to go all over the place. But when he'd finished the sentence you realised he'd in fact covered all the points he
needed to make. And had done so while at the same time picking up and factoring in the audience response. I think he may be very
bright indeed and quick on his feet.
Not well informed? I can't argue with that, not after Khan Shaykhun, but the same blanket of misinformation that covers almost
all of us in Europe or the States will presumably cover New York property developers. In the echo chamber that is Washington DC
I doubt there's much chance of remedying that. I speak to responsible well-educated people regularly whose knowledge of what is
happening abroad you would condemn as pitifully inadequate. Rightfully so. Those of you who have a more accurate idea of the facts
are few, and those of us who hear you are also in a tiny minority. That's a fact of life and we can no more condemn Trump for
being ill-informed than we can the most of your and my neighbours.
I pin my hopes on the fact that he does have a good intuition and is, as I say, quick on his feet. With such a person reality
has a better chance of getting through than it would with the usual tunnel vision politician.
His policies? I think we have to accept one unpalatable fact. An American politician who doesn't ostentatiously support
Israel doesn't get to be an American politician, if that's not a circular way of saying it. Since that to a lesser extent is the
case in England as well - you saw the trouble Corbyn got into recently - one either has to isolate oneself from political discussion
or just accept that most politicians of any importance here or in the States will be defective in that respect. That sounds heartless,
given what the Palestinians are going through, and given what Israel's neighbours are going through; but ceasing to strive for
a little because we cannot have more is even less acceptable.
His other policies? You do not write on the economy on your site. The European economies, that of the UK in particular, and
the American economy, are in a bad way. Urgently so. I can therefore only put forward as a view that the solutions proposed by
Trump in 2016 offered the only chance, if a slim one, of turning that round.
One final point. You've seen the re-election in Germany of Mrs Merkel - no idea how since none of the people I meet in
Germany would have dreamed of voting for her, but she's still there. You've seen a dead-beat government elected in the UK as well.
And in France you've seen the election of Macron! In America that pattern was broken. I think it might have been a fluke - I have
relatives in the States who are dyed in the wool Democrats but who just couldn't stomach the candidate they put up, and it seems
there were many like them. But fluke or not they now have a President who, judging by the way they attack him, is an opponent
of the type of policies that have led us to our present pass. He seems to have pretty well the entire American establishment and
the media against him so he may not get that far. But surely a slim chance of getting out of the hopeless mess that is our politics
in the West at present is better that the certainly of sinking further into it?
If by chance Trump or anyone is genuine about taking down the deep state, they cannot do it by running around in a pathetic
attempt trying to fix small issues.
They would have to leave the machine to carry on as normal and go for its foundations. I thought
about this months ago, and now looking at the latest events, this could be what is happening.
The real question is so much Russian influence as the US intelligence agencies influence on 2016 presidential elections. Brennan
in particular. He bet of Hillary Clinton and lost. After that he was instrumental in launching "color revolution" against Trump. In
which the the critical step was to appoint "special prosecutor".
Notable quotes:
"... But even more is emerging that could take the Russia story in a totally new direction -- namely that the infamous dossier compiled
by former British Secret Intelligence Service officer Christopher Steele was bought and paid for by a law firm , Perkins Coie, working
on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). ..."
"... The extent to which the Steele Dossier influenced the intelligence underpinning Mueller's probe has yet to be determined with
any certainty. In January, the U.S. intelligence community published the unclassified ICA, which was derived from a compilation of intelligence
reports and assessments conducted by the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Many of the allegations made in the ICA mirror reporting contained in the
Steele Dossier. So striking are the similarities that there are real concerns among some senior Republican lawmakers that the ICA merely
reflects "echoes" of the Steele Dossier reported back via liaison with foreign intelligence services who had access to it (namely the
British Secret Intelligence Service) or whose own sources were also utilized by Steele. ..."
"... An examination of the nexus between the dossier and the publication of the Russian ICA, however, shows that Litt was less than
truthful in his denials. Material from the Steele Dossier was, in fact, shared with the FBI and U.S. intelligence community in July
of 2016, and seems to have been the driving force behind the intelligence briefings provided to the so-called Gang of Eight who served
as the initial impetus for an investigation into Russian meddling that eventually morphed into the 2017 Russian ICA. ..."
"... Moreover, while Perkins Coie had its hands all over the dossier, it was also massaging the Russian hack narrative for mainstream
media primetime. ..."
"... The political law practice of Perkins Coie was started in 1981 under the leadership of Bob Bauer , who went on to become the
White House Counsel to President Barack Obama. Today, the practice is headed by Marc Elias , who has been described as "the Democrats'
go-to attorney an indispensable figure in the party." Elias oversees the work of 18 attorneys representing nearly every Democratic senator,
as well as the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and Hillary for America, which oversaw the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... Sussman, after coordinating with Wasserman-Schultz, approached the FBI and tried to get them to publicly attribute the intrusion
to Russia. ..."
"... When the FBI refused, citing a need to gain access to the DNC servers before it could make that call, Sussman balked and, again
with the full support of the DNC, instead coordinated a massive publicity effort intended to link Russia to the DNC breach through an
exclusive to the Washington Pos t ..."
"... According to the Washington Post , in early August 2016, the CIA director John Brennan came into possession of "sourcing deep
inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin's direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and
discredit the U.S. presidential race." This intelligence was briefed to the Gang of Eight. Almost immediately, information derived from
this briefing began to leak to the media. "Russia's hacking appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election," officials
with knowledge of Brennan's intelligence told the New York Times . The intelligence, referred to as "bombshell," allegedly "captured
Putin's specific instructions on the operation's audacious objectives -- defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton,
and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump." ..."
"... The question is was the investigation supposed to uncover whatever it uncovere, or was it supposed to fabricate the discovery?
If it was fabrication, yes, they should be condemned. ..."
"... My best guess is that some part of the US intelligence community is involved in the election manipulation. Overthrowing foreign
governments or undermining the EU is one thing, colluding with a foreign power to manipulate the US election is quite another. Note,
by the way, the absence of any reference to George Papadopulous or Viktor Yanukovych. ..."
"... But it is obvious that most of the Beltway including the spook world badly wants a proxy war with Russia, Iran, and Syria.
As usual we are killing people overseas under Presidents of both parties and as usual the United States of narcissism can only complain
about what dastardly foreigners allegedly did to us. ..."
"... Someone help me out here. If Clinton (or her very close associates) pay huge bucks to Russians to get dirt (even if it is made
up dirt) on Trump, that is good, because it hurts Trump. But if Trump associates simply have conversations with Russians, full stop
(cf. Michael Flynn, or anyone else who spoke with the Russian ambassador), that is criminal. Is this not sort of a double standard?
..."
"... We're expected to believe Crowdstrike's report on Russian hacking but we can't examine the evidence. We're expected to believe
that Perkins Coie went rogue and decided to spend $12 million without informing any of its clients. ..."
"... What a bunch of hogwash. There's a cover up here, but it's not what the complicit media is portraying. The cover up is of the
past 8 years of misdeeds by the Deep State, the Clintons and the Obama Administration. ..."
"... I think the story is even more obvious than this. They wanted to spy on aspects of the Trump campaign but they legally couldn't.
The FBI told them they needed a reason to tap the phones and read the mail. They paid a guy to put together a dossier that would allow
them to get FISA warrants to do the spying they wanted to do illegally. They just needed the dossier to say certain things to get it
past a FISA judge. They did this and tapped his phones and read his emails and texts for the purpose of beating him in the election.
It is really that simple of a story. ..."
"... Given Hillary's past pay to play lobbying and her disregard for national security, it would seem appropriate to have investigate
if members of the Clinton campaign had contacts with the Russian Ambassador or Russian "operatives. We now know that the dossier relied
on collaboration with Russian officials. ..."
"... In my opinion, Mueller has disgraced his former and present positions by collaborating in this conjured affair that obfuscates
the real crimes occurring during the Obama administration. ..."
"... Crooked Hillary and her klan never thought for a second they wouldn't be able to cover up democrat crimes. The Clinton Crime
Family is in full panic mode. No one seems to remember why Mueller quit as director of the FBI. He was disgusted by the Obama administration
covering up lawlessness. ..."
"... Why didn't the FBI insist on examining the DNC servers? Something's not right. ..."
"... I voted for Clinton, but as the lesser evil on various issues, chiefly domestic and environmental. Clinton is not in Putin's
pocket. She is in the pocket of Netanyahu, and the Saudis. Trump doesn't really seem to be in Putin's pocket -- he has neocons and others
working hard to ensure that he gets into a confrontation with Iran. Basically he too is in the pocket of the Israelis and the Saudis.
..."
"... The mainstream ignores this. The countries with real influence on our policies don't have to favor one party over the other.
They have them both in their pocket. ..."
"... As time goes on, I don't think Russia "meddled" in US elections as much as US politicians of both parties corruptly attempted
to rig the elections. Seems to me that the demonization of Russia is bi-partisan because the US military industrial complex needs a
"bogey man" to justify its billions$$$$ and just about ALL politicians need that money to stay in power. ..."
The Democratic Law Firm Behind the Russian Collusion Narrative How a high-powered practice contracted oppo-research
on Trump -- and then pushed a hack story.
Credit: Shutterstock/ Mark Van Scyoc The ongoing investigation
headed by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller into alleged collusion between the campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian
government has moved into a new phase, with a focus on
purported money laundering. On Monday,
indictments were filed against
former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates.
But even more is emerging that could take the Russia story in a totally new direction -- namely that the infamous dossier
compiled by former British Secret Intelligence Service officer Christopher Steele was
bought and paid for by a law firm , Perkins Coie, working on behalf of both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National
Committee (DNC).
The current controversy isn't so much over the contents of the dossier -- despite some of the reporting, none of the relevant
claims contained within have been verified. Rather, the issue in question is how opposition research derived from foreign intelligence
sources and paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC ended up influencing the decision to prepare the January 2017
Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) into alleged
Russian interference in the 2016 election, the contents of that assessment, and the subsequent investigations by the U.S. Congress
and a special prosecutor.
The extent to which the Steele Dossier influenced the intelligence underpinning Mueller's probe has yet to be determined with
any certainty. In January, the U.S. intelligence community published the unclassified ICA, which was derived from a compilation of
intelligence reports and assessments conducted by the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Many of the allegations made in the ICA mirror reporting
contained in the Steele Dossier. So striking are the similarities that there are
real
concerns among some senior Republican lawmakers that the ICA merely reflects "echoes" of the Steele Dossier reported back via
liaison with foreign intelligence services who had access to it (namely the British Secret Intelligence Service) or whose own sources
were also utilized by Steele.
According to Robert Litt , who served as general counsel
to former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, this mirroring was nothing more than coincidence. "The dossier itself,"
Litt wrote in a recent Lawfare blog , "played
absolutely no role in the coordinated intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in our election. That assessment, which was
released in unclassified form in January but which contained much more detail in the classified version that has been briefed to
Congress, was based entirely on other sources and analysis."
Moreover, Litt noted, the decision in December 2016 to brief President-elect Trump on the existence of the Steele Dossier and
provide him with a two-page summary of that document, was not a reflection that "the Intelligence Community had relied on it in any
way, or even made any determination that the information it contained was reliable and accurate." It was rather, Litt said, a need
to share with Trump the fact that the document existed and was being passed around Congress and the media.
An examination of the nexus between the dossier and the publication of the Russian ICA, however, shows that Litt was less
than truthful in his denials. Material from the Steele Dossier was, in fact, shared with the FBI and U.S. intelligence community
in July of 2016, and seems to have been the driving force behind the intelligence briefings provided to the so-called
Gang of Eight who served as the initial impetus for an investigation into Russian meddling that eventually morphed into the 2017
Russian ICA.
Moreover, while Perkins Coie had its hands all over the dossier, it was also massaging the Russian hack narrative for mainstream
media primetime.
It was in the latter two roles that Elias, acting on behalf of his clients, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington, D.C.-based company
that, according to its website , "provides premium research, strategic intelligence,
and due diligence services." Fusion GPS had previously been contracted by the
Washington Free Beacon "to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary." However, when it became clear that Trump
was going to secure the Republican Party nomination, the contract with Fusion GPS was terminated. According to
a letter sent by Perkins Coie to Fusion
GPS sometime in March 2016, Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, met with Elias and lobbied for the job of conducting
opposition research on behalf of the Clinton campaign. In April 2016, Simpson's company was retained by the firm through the end
of the election cycle.
Perkins Coie is also home to Michael
Sussman , a partner in the firm's Privacy and Data Security Practice, who was retained by the DNC to respond to the cyber-penetration
of their server in the spring of 2016. When, in late April 2016, the DNC discovered that its servers had been breached, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz,
then chairwoman of the DNC, turned to Perkins Coie and Sussman for help. Sussman chaired the meetings at the DNC regarding the breach,
and, on May 4, 2016,
he reached out to Shawn Henry , a former FBI agent who headed the incident response unit for the private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike,
for assistance in mitigating the fallout from the breach. According to CrowdStrike, it was immediately able to detect the presence
of hostile malware that it identified as Russian in origin. Sussman, after coordinating with Wasserman-Schultz, approached the
FBI and tried to get them to publicly attribute the intrusion to Russia.
When the FBI refused, citing a need to gain access to the DNC servers before it could make that call, Sussman balked and,
again with the full support of the DNC, instead coordinated a massive publicity effort intended to link Russia to the DNC breach
through
an exclusive to the Washington Pos t , which was published in concert with a dramatic CrowdStrike technical report
detailing the intrusion, ominously named
"Bears in the Midst."
This public relations campaign started the media frenzy over the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC server, enabling every facet
of the story that followed to be painted with a Russian brush -- normally with
a spokesperson from either
the DNC or Hillary for America taking the lead in promulgating the story.
It was about this same time that Elias decided to expand the scope of Fusion GPS's opposition research against Trump, going beyond
the simple mining of open-source information that had been the hallmark of the firm's work up until that time, and instead delving
into the active collection of information using methodologies more akin to the work of spy agencies. The person
Fusion GPS turned to for this task was Steele
Key persons within the Clinton campaign and the DNC denied any knowledge of either the decision by Perkins Coie to hire Fusion
GPS for the purpose of gathering opposition research, or to tap Steele to conduct this task. Elias reportedly made use of money already
paid to the firm by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to fund the work of Fusion GPS, creating the conditions for deniability on the
part of his clients. This decision meant that Perkins Coie, as a firm, had ownership of the Steele Dossier; expenditures of firm
assets require the approval of either the
management or executive committee
of the firm (Elias sits on the executive committee).
But as far as intelligence products go, the Steele Dossier is as sketchy as it gets. It's an amalgam of poorly written "reports"
cobbled together from what
Vanity Fair called "angry émigrés," "wheeling and dealing oligarchs," and "political dissidents with well-honed axes
to grind." These are precisely the kind of sources intelligence professionals operating in Russia in the early 1990s -- Steele was
assigned to Moscow from 1990 to 1993 -- would have had access to. Such sources also produce information that professional analysts
normally treat with more than a modicum of skepticism when preparing national-level intelligence products.
The very first report produced by Steele, dated June 20, 2016, was chock full of the kind of salacious details justifying its
explosive title, "Republican Candidate Donald Trump's Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship with the Kremlin." The substantive
charges leveled in the report centered on three unnamed sources -- a senior Foreign Ministry official, a former top-level Russian
intelligence officer, and a senior Russian financial official -- whom Steele accessed through a "trusted compatriot." The report
alleged that Russia had been feeding the Trump campaign "valuable intelligence" on Clinton, and that this effort was supported and
directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A second report, dated June 26, 2016, focused exclusively on "Russian State Sponsored
and Other Cyber Offensive (Criminal) Operations."
These reports were delivered to Elias at a critical time -- on July 22,
when Wikileaks released thousands of emails believed to have been sources from the DNC hack . These emails detailed the internal
deliberations of the DNC that proved to be embarrassing to both Clinton and the DNC leadership -- Wasserman-Schultz was compelled
to resign due to the revelations set forth in these emails. This leak took place on the eve of the Democratic National Convention
when Clinton was to be selected as the Democrats' candidate for president. The Clinton campaign blamed Russia. "Russian state actors,"
Robby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager told the press , "were feeding the email to hackers for the purpose of helping Donald
Trump."
If Elias thought the publication of the DNC emails would spur the U.S. intelligence community to join both the DNC and the Clinton
campaign in pointing an accusatory finger at Russia, he would be disappointed. When questioned by CNN's Jim Sciutto at the
2016 Aspen
Security Forum as to whether or not the DNI shared the White House's view that there was no doubt Russia was behind the hack
of the DNC emails, Clapper responded, "I don't think we are quite ready to make a call on attribution I don't think we are ready
to make a public call on that yet." Noting that there was still some uncertainty about exactly who was behind the DNC cyber-penetration,
Clapper stated that he was taken aback by the media's "hyperventilation" over the DNC email issue, pointing out that the intelligence
community did not "know enough to ascribe motivation" at that time.
According to the
Washington Post , in early August 2016, the CIA director John Brennan came into possession of "sourcing deep inside the
Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin's direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit
the U.S. presidential race." This intelligence was briefed to the Gang of Eight. Almost immediately, information derived from this
briefing began to leak to the media. "Russia's hacking appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election," officials
with knowledge of Brennan's intelligence told
the New York Times
. The intelligence, referred to as "bombshell," allegedly "captured Putin's specific instructions on the operation's audacious objectives
-- defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump."
This intelligence, allegedly from a "human source" linked to a foreign intelligence service, is at the center of the current spate
of Russian meddling investigations. Was this source a product of the CIA's own efforts, as DNI General Counsel Litt contends, or
was this an "echo" of the work done by Steele? The answer may lie in the actions of both Elias and Steele, who in the aftermath of
the Democratic National Convention, and on the heels of the statement by DNI Clapper that he wasn't ready to commit to Russian attribution,
shared the first two reports with both the FBI and members of the intelligence community.
Steele also sat down with U.S. officials to discuss the details of these reports , which presumably included the sourcing that
was used.
The parallels between the information contained in the initial report filed by Steele and the "bombshell" intelligence that prompted
Brennan's decision to brief the Gang of Eight are too close to be casually dismissed. Of particular note is Steele's "Source C,"
a senior Russian "financial official" who had "overheard Putin talking" on at least two occasions. Was this the source that Brennan
cited when it came to Putin's "specific instructions"? The cause and effect relationship between the decision by Marc Elias to brief
U.S. intelligence officials on the aspects of the Steele Dossier, and Brennan's coming into possession of intelligence that virtually
mirrors the reporting by Steele, cannot be dismissed out of hand.
The future of the Trump presidency will be determined by the various investigations currently underway. Those efforts have been
influenced, in one way or another, by reporting sourced to Perkins Coie, including the designation of Russia as the responsible party
behind the DNC cyber-breach and the Steele Dossier. These investigations are linked in their unquestioning embrace of the conclusions
set forth in the 2017 Russia Intelligence Community Assessment that Russia was, in fact, meddling in the election. However, the genesis
of that finding, both in terms of Russian involvement in the DNC hack and the "bombshell" intelligence introduced by Brennan in August
2016, has gone largely unquestioned by the investigators.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control
treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of Deal
of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West's Road to War (Clarity Press, 2017). MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR
The question is was the investigation supposed to uncover whatever it uncovere, or was it supposed to fabricate the discovery?
If it was fabrication, yes, they should be condemned. But if it was a question of "tell us what you find, good, bad, or indifferent"
then uncovering what might be treasonable activity would be called a patriotic act.
All of this and not one mention of how much of the controversy Donald Trump could defuse by simply releasing his tax returns and
allowing more transparency into his financial relationships with the Russian oligarchy.
Ritter's underlying 'logic' here extended would have us believe Alan Turin's breaking of the Enigma Machine was done in collusion
with Nazi U-boat commanders.
The spooks are still scared silly of Russiagate. "Hillary paid" doesn't mean "Hillary fabricated". That Mr Ritter is reduced to
such a manifestly silly argument shows just how spooked the spooks are. My best guess is that some part of the US intelligence
community is involved in the election manipulation. Overthrowing foreign governments or undermining the EU is one thing, colluding
with a foreign power to manipulate the US election is quite another. Note, by the way, the absence of any reference to George
Papadopulous or Viktor Yanukovych.
Given that Russia's insiders (not to mention former-officials) are no more lined up with Putin than US counterparts and political
actors are behind any current US administration or opponent, within and without the party in power, there are presumably Russian
actors who would like to undermine Putin.
To the extent "the Russians" may be behind particular efforts – including information/disinformation – related to the 2016
US election, might they not have sought to undermine foreign and (Russian) domestic proponents of US-Russian detente?
" Overthrowing foreign governments or undermining the EU is one thing, colluding with a foreign power to manipulate the
US election is quite another. "
This is a joke. I have no concern one way or the other about whether Trump colluded with Russia – if laws were broken, prosecute
the lot of them. But it is obvious that most of the Beltway including the spook world badly wants a proxy war with Russia,
Iran, and Syria. As usual we are killing people overseas under Presidents of both parties and as usual the United States of narcissism
can only complain about what dastardly foreigners allegedly did to us.
In DC we have a vicious fight between the McCain-Clinton forces and the Trump forces. It's a choice between warmongers.
Donald (the left leaning one), I agree with your concluding comment that we are left with a choice between two warmongers, no
question about that. However if you look at the corruption in the deep state in the Uranium One deal, how it was approved and
now nobody, I mean nobody knows anything about FBI informant and gag order on him for the last 8 years it is just mind boggling.
Oh well after all these years I think the African dictators have more integrity than our elected officials.
Someone help me out here. If Clinton (or her very close associates) pay huge bucks to Russians to get dirt (even if it is
made up dirt) on Trump, that is good, because it hurts Trump. But if Trump associates simply have conversations with Russians,
full stop (cf. Michael Flynn, or anyone else who spoke with the Russian ambassador), that is criminal. Is this not sort of a double
standard?
I've worked at large law firms, been a partner at several and litigated against Perkins Coie, so I know a bit about them. Knowing
the industry and this firm in particular, I can say without reservation that this statement is ridiculous: "Elias reportedly made
use of money already paid to the firm by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to fund the work of Fusion GPS, creating the conditions
for deniability on the part of his clients." That does not and would not happen with a $12 million expense.
Mr. Ritter does not come out and say it, but there's a plausible explanation for all of this Russia nonsense we've been hearing
about for the past year. Until the day after the election, 99.9% of Democrats were convinced that Hillary Clinton would win. Once
enshrined in office, all of the misdeeds that they'd been getting away with for the past decade -- the Clinton Foundation, Uranium
One, the Pay-to-Play politics, etc. -- would be swept under the rug.
November came, and that didn't happen. Democrats were both floored and caught with their pants down. Now, all of their dirty
laundry was going to come out into the open. It was only a matter of time.
So, what did they do? The same thing Democrats always do. The best defense is an offense. 'Always accuse your opponents of
doing whatever wrong you've committed.' All of the sudden, it wasn't just that 'Russians hacked the election.' It became, 'the
Trump campaign secretly colluded with the Russians.' The Steele dossier was leaked, the FBI was briefed which in turn briefed
Obama, the Gang of Eight and Trump. Next, a Special Prosecutor had to be appointed to investigate.
But, where does it all lead? Back to Hillary, through Perkins Coie, and through many of the same Deep State players who were
complicit in the misdeeds.
We now learn that Comey, Mueller and Rosenstein all knew about Russians attempting to buy influence through donations to the
Clinton "charity," but they turned a blind eye when Uranium One was up for approval.
We now learn that Clinton and the DNC paid for the Steele dossier then fed it to Comey, who leaked it.
We're expected to believe Crowdstrike's report on Russian hacking but we can't examine the evidence. We're expected to
believe that Perkins Coie went rogue and decided to spend $12 million without informing any of its clients.
What a bunch of hogwash. There's a cover up here, but it's not what the complicit media is portraying. The cover up is
of the past 8 years of misdeeds by the Deep State, the Clintons and the Obama Administration.
I find it curious that Crooked Mueller charged two republicans just as Crooked Hillary and the DNC were identified for paying
Russians for smear documents! America First!
How is it not true? Reports indicate that Mr. Steele did indeed use paid sources within Russia to compile the "dossier" on Trump.
Steele used money paid by the Clinton campaign labeled as "legal fees". There is a reason Hillary, DWS, Podesta and the others
have all lied.
I think the story is even more obvious than this. They wanted to spy on aspects of the Trump campaign but they legally couldn't.
The FBI told them they needed a reason to tap the phones and read the mail. They paid a guy to put together a dossier that would
allow them to get FISA warrants to do the spying they wanted to do illegally. They just needed the dossier to say certain things
to get it past a FISA judge. They did this and tapped his phones and read his emails and texts for the purpose of beating him
in the election. It is really that simple of a story.
Did Obama's White House Counsel Bauer and Perkins Coie's Elias engage in a conspiracy to smear Trump and benefit the Clinton campaign?
Did they orchestrate a campaign trick, using the Fusion GPS dossier and an insider leaking DNC emails to Wikileaks,that falsely
smeared the Trump team?
Hillary and Fusion GPS both lobbied against business restrictions proposed and imposed by the Magnitsky legislation and both
received bonuses and payments from Russian entities with ties to the Putin gang.
Given Hillary's past pay to play lobbying and her disregard for national security, it would seem appropriate to have investigate
if members of the Clinton campaign had contacts with the Russian Ambassador or Russian "operatives. We now know that the dossier
relied on collaboration with Russian officials.
Given that several levels under the 17 intelligence heads of the Obama administration, including former FBI Director Mueller,
participated in suppressing known Russian bribery, obfuscated and obstructed the investigation into Hillary's national security
violations & pay to play schemes, and apparently conspired using a dossier, containing Russian supplied information, to throw
the last Presidential election, it is time to bring the Obama political appointees and Clinton campaign officials to justice and
stop the interference affecting the Trump administration.
In my opinion, Mueller has disgraced his former and present positions by collaborating in this conjured affair that obfuscates
the real crimes occurring during the Obama administration.
The Russian SVR RF was no doubt inside the DNC's server, just as it was no doubt inside of Hillary Clinton's private unsecured
email server on which she did all of her State Department business.
But that does not necessarily mean that the SVR RF released the damning evidence about the corruption of the DNC & its machinations
to influence the outcome of the Election to Wikileaks. I believe Seth Rich was the source of that damning evidence.
Since there was allegedly some evidence of the Russian hacking, the DNC conveniently blamed the Wikileaks story on them.
But the fact the Democrats refused to turn over the supposedly hacked DNC server to the FBI suggests there is something seriously
wrong with the Democ"rats" story.
Crooked Hillary and her klan never thought for a second they wouldn't be able to cover up democrat crimes. The Clinton Crime
Family is in full panic mode. No one seems to remember why Mueller quit as director of the FBI. He was disgusted by the Obama
administration covering up lawlessness.
All of this and not one mention of how much of the controversy Hillary Clinton could defuse by simply releasing all of the government
emails she kept on a private server in order to keep them away from FOIA requests and allowing more transparency into her financial
relationships with the Russian oligarchy.
Nice try at deflection, but it is not likely to stop Muller because he has an actual brain. On the other hand, the comments indicate
that the conspiracy types are on board. Now I have it on good authority that there are ties between Steele and Benghazi as well
so it is time to wrap this all up together into a unified story.
Since most of the posters here seem to be partisan I'm sure that no one will like my preference: Lock both Trump and HRC up and
put them in the same cell to save us money. They are both crooked and any attempt to accuse one and defend the other is futile.
Karen Finney, formerly of the Clinton 2016 campaign, on October 29th:
"I think what's important, though, is less who funded it than what was in the dossier."
In the same interview:
"We also learned this week that Cambridge Analytica, the company that was basically the data company for the [Trump] campaign,
reached out to Julian Assange of Wikileaks."
Did everybody catch that?
In today's Democratic Party, it is perfectly acceptable to pay foreign sources for dirt, fabricated or not, on your domestic
political opponent.
But it is totally unacceptable to reach out to Wikileaks, with no money involved, for dirt on your domestic political opponent.
I'll note that Wikileaks has relied on whistle-blower sources and has not been shown to have published any false information in
its entire 10-year existence.
The Russian SVR RF was likely inside the DNC's server, just as it was likely inside of Hillary Clinton's private unsecured email
server on which she did all of her State Department business.
But that does not necessarily mean that the SVR RF released the evidence about the rotten corruption of the DNC & its machinations
to influence the outcome of the Election to Wikileaks. I believe Seth Rich was the source of that evidence.
Since there was allegedly some evidence of the Russian hacking, the DNC conveniently blamed the Wikileaks story on them.
But the fact the Democrats refused to turn over the supposedly hacked DNC server to the FBI suggests that there is something
seriously wrong with the Democ"rats" story.
To all of those who think that paying a foreign informant money to give you info is the same thing as accepting help from a foreign
government, you have some screws lose.
Furthermore, the help that Trump received was in the form of emails that have been stolen from an American citizen, a federal
offence.
The whole Uranium one non story is based on a book that his own author admitted he has no evidence of malfeasance by HRC ,
and who was paid for his effort by the Mercers.
Also, the Uranium cannot be exported outside the USA anyway, because the law prevents it, no matter who owns the company
To all those who think what Hillary campaign did is the same thing as what Trump campaign did: Can you with a straight face think
that Hillary is in Putin's pocket? I don't think so. The issue, if you're being honest, is that a lot of people on the other side
can easily see Trump being in Putin's pocket. And so far he (Trump) has done nothing to disprove that. Remember the Glee that
the neocons had when Trump ordered a few missiles at Syria..guess what nothing came off it and Assad is still very much in power
and no one cares anymore (an outcome that I am fine with). You think things would have been the same if Hillary was in power?
But at the end of the day, we're left to wonder whether Trump is doing Putin's bidding Just because so far he has done nothing
that has been antagonistic towards Russian interests (Iran notwithstanding because nothing is going to come off it, all it is
going to do is make US look impotent, which will be fine by Putin).
If only Sanders had ever exclaimed something like "The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn Russians!"
If there is any kind of actual evidence of state actors in the various efforts to force transparency on the Clinton campaign
and the DNC, it is now tainted by the association with Steele, Simpson, Elias, which appear to have repeatedly acted against client
privileges and privacy – peddling results paid for by one client to another, leaking information paid for by clients to the press,
Congress, the FBI – or have acted with client permission, while a former "spy" is accessing and potentially endangering networks
maintained by his former employer, a foreign intelligence service known for its ability to find yellowcake.
Only the Democrats can show such staggering ineptitude.
The plot needs some new, exciting turn at this point. Let us speculate that the Steele Dossier was in fact a false flag operation,
allowing "Russians" to discredit not one, but two presidential campaigns, not one, but two presidential candidates, a twofer that
makes whomever becomes President look like an idiot. One of the most ridiculous propositions of this whole affair has been the
claim that Putin would seriously care which incompetent and corrupt American gets to prosecute the self-inflicted ruin of this
blighted nation for the next four years.
@Virginia Farmer : "Lock both Trump and HRC up and put them in the same cell to save us money. They are both crooked and any attempt
to accuse one and defend the other is futile."
"To all those who think what Hillary campaign did is the same thing as what Trump campaign did: Can you with a straight face think
that Hillary is in Putin's pocket?"
I'm not very partisan. I voted for Clinton, but as the lesser evil on various issues, chiefly domestic and environmental.
Clinton is not in Putin's pocket. She is in the pocket of Netanyahu, and the Saudis. Trump doesn't really seem to be in Putin's
pocket -- he has neocons and others working hard to ensure that he gets into a confrontation with Iran. Basically he too is in
the pocket of the Israelis and the Saudis.
The mainstream ignores this. The countries with real influence on our policies don't have to favor one party over the other.
They have them both in their pocket.
Yeah, I can't keep up with all the twists and turns. I read just enough to see both sides ( the partisan ones) live in closed
cognitive universes. I suspect there is plenty of corruption and dishonesty to go around, even if we restricted ourselves to real
or alleged Russian ties. But I wonder what would turn up if we really looked into how our foreign policy sausage is made?
In my annoyance I overstated it a little, but this thread is a good example of what I was saying about a lot of the liberal
commenters on TAC. I don't read a lot of these comments and see people who are giving the article much thought.
BTW I was about to write the exact same thing to JR you did regarding the Saudis and the Israelis.
As time goes on, I don't think Russia "meddled" in US elections as much as US politicians of both parties corruptly attempted
to rig the elections. Seems to me that the demonization of Russia is bi-partisan because the US military industrial complex needs
a "bogey man" to justify its billions$$$$ and just about ALL politicians need that money to stay in power.
"... When I first read the memos, I knew none of the backstory, and looked forward to the salacious content to bring this clown down, particularly any facts showing that the Trump people had prior knowledge of the Russian hacks - a Watergate-sized story, if true, even if the effects of the hacks on the election are being overblown. But with nearly 40 years of investigative experience, mostly on international issues, the wording of the memos quickly caused me to slam on the breaks, because they were worded in such a way as to make confirmation of the charges impossible. The rule involved in making professional judgments on these kinds of things is simple: you look for information that can be proven either true or false, and from that factual template, you then build out one incontrovertible fact at a time. These memoranda had no such facts, with the possible exception of Cohen's trip to Prague, which the FBI told the WSJ was false. ..."
... think it was wrong for BuzzFeed to publish it and the media company
bears responsibility for this debacle, which has made the entire profession look even worse and generated
sympathy for, of all people, Donald Trump.
Simpson's firm is being berated at the moment but there are a lot
of companies in Washington who do the same thing - namely produce political and business intelligence
for paying clients - and they operate openly and everyone, including journalists, know who they are.
In terms of political intelligence, there are firms who work for Democrats and firms that work for
Republicans, and some who work for both. The Democrats don't have a monopoly on these firms as one
might imagine from the current hysteria.
... ... ...
As has been widely reported, the Trump dossier had circulated for
many months - at least as far back as August - and even though there was a fever on the part of the
media to get anti-Trump stories into print, everyone with the exception of David Corn of Mother
Jones declined to write about the "dossier," and even he only referred to parts of it. The fact
that dozens of journalists reviewed these documents and declined to use them, on the grounds that
their allegations could not be verified shows that the information contained within them was very
shaky.
I read the documents online and it's clear that they are thinly sourced and there
were apparently serious errors in them, for example the bit about Trump's attorney's trip to
Prague...
... ... ...
Whatever you think of Trump, he won this embarrassing election under
the rules of the game. (And yes, Hillary won the popular vote and in a serious democracy she would
have been declared the winner, but we are stuck for the time being with the Electoral College.) The
Golden Showers story is quite a sensational accusation to make given that he was about 10 days out
from inauguration. If Hillary had won the election would Buzzfeed have posted an unproven dossier
on her that alleged she had hired prostitutes during an overseas trip to Ukraine? I seriously doubt
it, especially given Buzzfeed's notable pro-Hillary tilt during the campaign.
... ... ...
When Chuck Todd accused Smith of publishing "fake news," he suggested
that BuzzFeed was just being a good Internet news organization and not letting the media and political
elite keep information from the public. This would be easier to take more seriously if BuzzFeed is
not so obviously a part of the media elite and doesn't fraternize so comfortably with the political
elite like most other news outlets. BuzzFeed was chasing clicks and that's fine, but dressing this
up as public service doesn't cut it and especially given the political calculations involved.
BuzzFeed's other excuse was that the documents were already being
talked about and were referred to in the Intelligence Community's very dubious report on Trump. But
the documents appear to have been given to various agencies by political figures seeking to burn
Trump, which BuzzFeed was only too happy to help out with. So it appears that Trump's political enemies
and media enemies were working together to get this information out before the inauguration.
I'd also note here one peculiar, and possibly unethical, thing about
the New York Times' behavior here. The Times, like everyone but BuzzFeed, didn't
publish the report but they wrote quite a bit about it. In an early story it said that they would
not identify the research firm behind the leaked memos because of "a confidential source agreement
with The New York Times." Then it revealed the firm's name in a later story and edited the earlier
one to take out the line about their confidential source agreement.
So it looks like the Times violated a confidentiality agreement, which
is pretty troubling...
... ... ...
Note: I'd strongly urge anyone following this story to friend long-time investigative
journalist and researcher Craig Pyes on Facebook. ....
Here is an excerpt:
When I first read the memos, I knew none of the backstory, and looked forward
to the salacious content to bring this clown down, particularly any facts showing that the Trump
people had prior knowledge of the Russian hacks - a Watergate-sized story, if true, even if the
effects of the hacks on the election are being overblown. But with nearly 40 years of investigative
experience, mostly on international issues, the wording of the memos quickly caused me to slam
on the breaks, because they were worded in such a way as to make confirmation of the charges impossible.
The rule involved in making professional judgments on these kinds of things is simple: you look
for information that can be proven either true or false, and from that factual template, you then
build out one incontrovertible fact at a time. These memoranda had no such facts, with the possible
exception of Cohen's trip to Prague, which the FBI told the WSJ was false.
"... Warning that a "soft coup" is being waged against Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he sees attempts in the United States to "delegitimize" US President-elect Donald Trump using "Maidan-style" methods previously used in Ukraine, where readers will recall president Yanukovich was ousted in 2014 following a violent coup, which many suspect was conducted under the auspices of the US State Department and assorted US intelligence operations. ..."
"... Putin said he doesn't believe that Donald Trump met with prostitutes in Russia, calling the accusations part of a campaign to undermine the election result, and suggested that an internal political struggle is underway in the United States despite the fact that the presidential election is over, and added that reports of alleged Russian dossier on Trump are fake as "our security services do not chase every US billionaire." ..."
Warning that a "soft coup" is being waged against Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin
said that he sees attempts in the United States to "delegitimize" US President-elect Donald Trump
using "Maidan-style" methods previously used in Ukraine, where readers will recall president Yanukovich
was ousted in 2014 following a violent coup, which many suspect was conducted under the auspices
of the US State Department and assorted US intelligence operations.
Putin said he doesn't believe that Donald Trump met with prostitutes in Russia, calling the
accusations part of a campaign to undermine the election result, and
suggested that an internal political struggle is underway in the United States despite the fact
that the presidential election is over, and added that reports of alleged Russian dossier on Trump
are fake as "our security services do not chase every US billionaire."
Unsubstantiated allegations made against Trump are "obvious fabrications," Putin told reporters
in the Kremlin on Tuesday. "People who order fakes of the type now circulating against the U.S. president-elect,
who concoct them and use them in a political battle, are worse than prostitutes because they don't
have any moral boundaries at all," he said.
The Russian president,
cited by BBG, said that Trump wasn't a politician when he visited Moscow in the past and Russian
officials weren't aware that he held any political ambitions.
Looks like the US Senate is a real can of worms...
Notable quotes:
"... One involved the media, which in October were given and encouraged to publish the "report" by the authors of the report (or their sponsors), purportedly a former British intelligence officer working for a private intelligence company ..."
"... Remember, we have a dubious report constructed for the purpose of discrediting Donald Trump, which was first commissioned by one of his Republican primary rivals and later completed under the patronage of someone in Hillary's camp. ..."
"... Enter John McCain. According to media reports, the dossier was handed to Sen. McCain -- again, a strong Trump opponent and proponent of conflict with Russia -- by a former UK ambassador (who presumably received it from the source, a former British intelligence officer). ..."
"... Senator McCain is the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful members of the US Senate. Consider the impact of being handed a strange report by some private intelligence-firm-for-hire or a media outlet versus being handed a report by one of the most powerful men in the US government. McCain's involving himself in the case gave the report a sense of legitimacy that it would not otherwise have had. Was this "laundering" intentional on his part? We do not know, but given his position on Trump and Russia that possibility must be considered. ..."
"... So great was the pressure on McCain to come clean on his decision to meet privately with the FBI Director to hand over this report that he released a statement earlier today portraying himself as nothing more than a good citizen, passing information to the proper authorities for them to act on if they see fit. ..."
We all know what money laundering is. When you need to hide the fact that the money in your possession
comes by way of nefarious sources, you transfer it through legitimate sources and it appears clean
on the other end. It's standard practice among thieves, extortionists, drug dealers, and the like.
The same practice can even be used to "clean" intelligence that comes by dubious sources, and
sometimes even US Senators may involve themselves in such dark activities. Case in point US Senator
John McCain (R-AZ), whose virulent opposition to Donald Trump is outmatched only by his total dedication
to fomenting a new cold (or hot?) war with Russia.
While the world was caught up in the more salacious passages from a purported opposition research
report on Donald Trump showing all manner of collusion with Putin's Russia -- and Russia's possession
of blackmail-able kompromat
on Trump -- something very interesting was revealed about the custody of the information.
The "dossier" on Trump seemed to follow two chains of custody. One involved the media, which in October
were given and encouraged to publish the "report" by the authors of the report (or their sponsors),
purportedly a former British intelligence officer working for a private intelligence company. Only
David Corn of Mother Jones bit, and his resulting story picked over the report to construct a mess
of innuendo on Trump's relation to Russia that was short on any evidence.
The other chain of custody is what interests us. Remember, we have a dubious report constructed
for the purpose of discrediting Donald Trump, which was first commissioned by one of his Republican
primary rivals and later completed under the patronage of someone in Hillary's camp. It was created
for a specific political purpose, which may have tainted its reception among more objective governmental
sources had that been known.
Enter John McCain. According to
media reports, the dossier was handed to Sen. McCain -- again, a strong Trump opponent and proponent
of conflict with Russia -- by a former UK ambassador (who presumably received it from the source,
a former British intelligence officer).
Senator McCain then felt duty-bound to bring this "intelligence report" directly (and privately)
to the personal attention of FBI Director James Comey. From this hand-off to Comey, the report then
became part of the Intelligence Community's assessment of Russian interference in the US presidential
election.
Senator McCain is the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful
members of the US Senate. Consider the impact of being handed a strange report by some private intelligence-firm-for-hire
or a media outlet versus being handed a report by one of the most powerful men in the US government.
McCain's involving himself in the case gave the report a sense of legitimacy that it would not otherwise
have had. Was this "laundering" intentional on his part? We do not know, but given his position on
Trump and Russia that possibility must be considered.
So great was the pressure on McCain to come clean on his decision to meet privately with the
FBI Director to hand over this report that he
released a statement earlier today portraying himself as nothing more than a good citizen, passing
information to the proper authorities for them to act on if they see fit.
"... For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful. ..."
"... Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued. ..."
"... puts his name on stuff ..."
"... (2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy ..."
"... Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky – ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at the head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the US by means of "gravitational weapons". ..."
"... Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele? ..."
"... But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption that agents of the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary of a hostile secret service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President of the US is to be discredited appears strange. ..."
"... Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible, you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational, and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st and ..."
"... Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for whoever wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or the "grab her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally wounding to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a rigged game, you don't care about the niceties. ..."
"... transition ..."
"... And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days. ..."
"... Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. ..."
In any case, a link to the following story in Hamburg's ridiculously sober-sided Die Zeit came
over the transom:
So schockiert von Trump wie alle anderen ("So shocked by Trump like everyone else"). The reporter
is Alexej Kowaljow
, a Russian journalist based in Moscow. Before anyone goes "ZOMG! The dude is Russian
!", everything Kowaljow writes is based on open sources or common-sense information presumably available
to citizens of any nation. The bottom line for me is that if the world is coming to believe that
Americans are idiots, it's not necessarily because Americans elected Trump as President.
I'm going to lay out two claims and two questions from Kowaljow's piece. In each case, I'll quote
the conventional, Steele and intelligence community-derived wisdom in our famously free press, and
then I'll quote Kowaljow. I think Kowaljow wins each time. Easily. I don't think Google Translate
handles irony well, but I sense that Kowaljow is deploying it freely.
(1) Trump's Supposed Business Dealings in Russia Are Commercial Puffery
Here's
the
section on Russia in Time's article on Trump's business dealings; it's representative. I'm going
to quote it all so you can savor it. Read it carefully.
Donald Trump's Many, Many Business Dealings in 1 Map
Russia
"For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia," Trump
tweeted
in July, one day before he called on the country to "find" a batch of emails deleted from
Hillary Clinton's private server. Nonetheless, Russia's extraordinary meddling in the 2016 U.S.
election-a declassified report released by U.S. intelligence agencies in January disclosed that
intercepted conversations captured senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's win-as well as
Trump's complimentary remarks about Russian President have stirred widespread questions about
the President-elect's pursuit of closer ties with Moscow. Several members of Trump's inner circle
have business links to Russia, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who
consulted for pro-Russia politicians in the Ukraine. Former foreign policy adviser Carter
Page worked in Russia and
maintains ties there.
During the presidential transition, former Georgia Congressman and Trump campaign surrogate
Jack Kingston
told a gathering of businessmen in Moscow that the President-elect could lift U.S. sanctions.
According to his own son, Trump has long relied on Russian customers as a source of income.
"Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump
Jr.
told a Manhattan real estate conference in 2008 , according to an account posted on the website
of trade publication eTurboNews. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Back to map .
Read that again, if you can stand it. Do you see the name of an actual business, owned by Trump?
Do you see the name of any businessperson who closed a deal with Trump? Do you, in fact, see any
reporting at all? At most, you see commercial puffery by Trump the Younger: "Russians [in Russia?]
make up a pretty [qualifier] disproportionate [whatever that means] cross-section [whatever that
means] of a lot of [qualifier] our assets."
Now Kowaljow (via Google Translate, so forgive any solecisms):
For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30
years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although
Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest
hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful.
Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the
Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump
Vodka was discontinued.
Because think about it: Trump puts his name on stuff . Towers in Manhattan, hotels, casinos,
golf courses, steaks. Anything in Russia with Trump's name on it? Besides the failed vodka venture?
No? Case closed, then.
(2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy
Five reasons intel community believes Russia interfered in election
The attacks dovetailed with other Russian disinformation campaigns
The report covers more than just the hacking effort. It also contains a detailed list account
of information warfare against the United States from Russia through other means.
Political party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who the report lists as a "pro-Kremlin proxy,"
said before the election that, if Trump won, Russia would 'drink champagne' to celebrate their
new ability to advance in Syria and Ukraine.
Now Kowaljow:
The report of the American intelligence services on the Russian interference in the US elections,
published at the beginning of January, was notoriously neglected by Russians, because the name
of Vladimir Zhirinovsky was mentioned among the "propaganda activities of Russia", which had announced
that in the event of an election victory of Trump champagne to want to drink.
Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky
– ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at the
head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party is
neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing
populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the
US by means of "gravitational weapons".
If, therefore, the Kremlin had indeed had the treacherous plan of helping Trump to power, it
would scarcely have been made known about Zhirinovsky.
The American equivalent would be. Give me a moment to think of an American politician who's both
so delusional and such a laughingstock that no American President could possibly
consider using them as a proxy in a devilishly complex informational warfare campaign Sara Palin?
Anthony Weiner? Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Na ga happen.
And now to the two questions.
(3) Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele?
Kowaljow:
But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and
contradictions. The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption
that agents of the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary
of a hostile secret service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President
of the US is to be discredited appears strange.
Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible,
you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational,
and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st
and 20th centuries, suborning the President of the United States, and whose intelligence agencies
are (3) leakly like a sieve. Does that make sense? (Of course, the devilish Russkis could have fed
Steele bad data, knowing he'd then feed it to the American intelligence agencies, who would lap it
up, but that's another narrative.)
(4) How Do You Compromise the Uncompromisable?
Funny how suddenly the word kompromat was everywhere, wasn't it? So sophisticated. Everybody
loves to learn a new word! Regarding the "Golden Showers" - more sophistication! - Kowaljow writes:
But even if such a compromise should exist, what sense should it have, since the most piquant
details have long been publicly discussed in public, and had no effect on the votes of the elected
president? Like all the other scandals trumps, which passed through the election campaign, they
also remained unresolved, including those who were concerned about sex.
This also includes what is known as a compromise, compromising material, that is, video shots
of the unsightly nature, which can destroy both the political career and the life of a person.
The word Kompromat shines today – as in the past Perestroika – in all headlines; It was not invented
in Russia, of course. But in Russia in the Yeltsin era, when the great clans in the power gave
bitter fights and intensively used the media, works of this kind have ended more than just a brilliant
career. General Prosecutor Jurij Skuratov was dismissed after a video had been shown in the country-wide
television channels: There, a person "who looks like the prosecutor's office" had sex with two
prostitutes.
Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for
whoever wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or
the "grab her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally
wounding to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a
rigged game, you don't care about the niceties.
Conclusion
It would be nice, wouldn't it, if our famously free press was actually covering the Trump
transition , instead of acting like their newsrooms are mountain redoubts for an irrendentist
Clinton campaign. It would be nice, for example, to know:
The content and impact of Trump's Executive Orders.
Ditto, regulations.
Personnel decisions below the Cabinet level. Who are the Flexians?
Obama policies that will remain in place, because both party establishments support them.
Charters, for example.
Republican inroads in Silicon Valley.
The future of the IRS, since Republicans have an axe to grind with it.
Mismatch between State expectations for infrastructure and Trump's implementation
And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which
Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich
with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy
of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days.
Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were
all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility
voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. Failing
unless, of course, you're the sort of sleaze merchant who
downsizes the newsroom because, hey, it's all about the clicks.
"... BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Steele had previously been an intelligence officer - rather than agent - in MI6, who would have run a team of agents as an intelligence gatherer. ..."
"... Intelligence agencies considered the claims relevant enough to brief both Mr Trump and President Obama last week. ..."
"... But the allegations have not been independently substantiated or verified and some details have been challenged as incorrect by those who are mentioned. ..."
"... Mr Trump himself was briefed about the existence of the allegations by the US intelligence community last week but has since described them as fake news, accusing the US intelligence services of leaking the dossier. ..."
An ex-MI6 officer who is believed to have prepared memos claiming Russia has compromising material
on US President-elect Donald Trump is now in hiding, the BBC understands.
Christopher Steele, who runs a London-based intelligence firm, is believed to have left his home
this week.
The memos contain unsubstantiated claims that Russian security officials have compromising material
on Mr Trump.
The US president-elect said the claims were "fake news" and "phoney stuff".
Mr Steele has been widely named as the author of a series of memos - which have been published
as a dossier in some US media - containing extensive allegations about Mr Trump's personal life and
his campaign's relationship with the Russian state.
... ... ...
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Steele had previously been an intelligence officer
- rather than agent - in MI6, who would have run a team of agents as an intelligence gatherer.
However, as Mr Steele was now working in the private sector, our correspondent said, there was
"probably a fair bit of money involved" in the commissioning of the reports.
He said there was no evidence to substantiate the allegations and it was still possible the dossier
had been based on what "people had said" about Mr Trump "without any proof".
Donald J. Tump Twit
@realDonaldTrump
James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally
circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!
... ... ...
Obama briefing
The 35-page dossier on Mr Trump - which is believed to have been commissioned initially by Republicans
opposed to Mr Trump - has been circulating in Washington for some time.
Media organisations, uncertain of its credibility, initially held back from publication. However,
the entire series of reports has now been posted online, with Mr Steele named as the author.
Intelligence agencies considered the claims relevant enough to brief both Mr Trump and President
Obama last week.
But the allegations have not been independently substantiated or verified and some details have
been challenged as incorrect by those who are mentioned.
Mr Trump himself was briefed about the existence of the allegations by the US intelligence community
last week but has since described them as fake news, accusing the US intelligence services of leaking
the dossier.
So guardian clearly supports Steele dossier. Nice... So the guy clearly tried to influence
the US election and Guardian neoliberal honchos and their Russophobic presstitutes (like Luke
Harding) are OK with it. They just complain about Russian influence. British elite hypocrisy in action...
Notable quotes:
"... Published in January by BuzzFeed , the dossier suggested that Donald Trump's team had colluded with Russian intelligence before the US election to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Citing unidentified sources, it said Trump had been "compromised" by Russia's FSB spy agency during a trip to Moscow in 2013. ..."
"... Trump dismissed the dossier as fake news and said Steele was a "failed spy". Vladimir Putin also rejected the dossier. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Russia did not collect kompromat – compromising material – on Trump or anyone else. ..."
"... As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium poisoning, quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his case officer, friends said. ..."
Christopher Steele speaks publicly for first time since the file was revealed and thanks
supporters for 'kind messages'
The former MI6 agent behind the
controversial Trump dossier has returned to work, nearly two months after its publication caused
an international scandal and furious denials from Washington and Moscow.
Christopher Steele posed for a photograph outside the office of his business intelligence company
Orbis in Victoria, London on Tuesday. Speaking for the first time since his
dossier was revealed , Steele said he had received messages of support.
"I'm now going to be focusing my efforts on supporting the broader interests of our company here,"
he told the Press Association. "I'd like to say a warm thank you to everyone who sent me kind messages
and support over the last few weeks."
Steele, who left British intelligence in 2009 and co-founded Orbis with an MI6 colleague, said
he would not comment substantively on the contents of the dossier: "Just to add, I won't be making
any further statements or comments at this time."
Published in January by BuzzFeed , the dossier suggested that Donald Trump's team had colluded
with Russian intelligence before the US election to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Citing unidentified
sources, it said Trump had been "compromised" by Russia's FSB spy agency during a trip to Moscow
in 2013.
It alleged that Trump was secretly videoed with Russian prostitutes in a suite in the Ritz-Carlton
hotel in Moscow. The prostitutes allegedly urinated on the bed used by Barack Obama during a presidential
visit.
Trump dismissed the dossier as fake news and said Steele was a "failed spy". Vladimir Putin
also rejected the dossier. His spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed
Russia did not collect
kompromat – compromising material – on Trump or anyone else.
Steele's friends say he has been keen to go back to work for some weeks. They insist he has not
been in hiding but has been keeping a low profile to avoid paparazzi who have been camped outside
his family home in Surrey.
Several of the lurid stories about him that have appeared in the press have been wrong, said friends.
The stories include claims that Steele met Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident who was murdered
in 2006 with a radioactive cup of tea,
probably on Putin's orders .
As head of MI6's Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko's polonium poisoning,
quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his
case officer, friends said.
Neocons still dream of Trump impeachment. Neutering him is not enough... the number of potentially illegal wiretaps of Trump associates
suggests that threr was a plan to derail plan in three letter agencies headquarters (with blessing of Obama). Plan of interfere with
the US election to be exact.
Notable quotes:
"... Reports that the FBI wiretapped former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are a further sign of the seriousness of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation. But there's still a great deal we don't know about the implications, if any, for the broader inquiry into possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign. ..."
"... The other import of this news involves the possible implications if Manafort is charged. The New York Times reported Monday that when Manafort's home was searched in July, investigators told him he should expect to be indicted. ..."
"... A typical white-collar investigation often proceeds by building cases against lower-level participants in a scheme -- the little fish -- and then persuading them to cooperate in the investigation of the bigger fish. Trump and his associates therefore may have reason to be concerned about what Manafort could tell investigators, if he were indicted and chose to cooperate. ..."
"... Again, much of this is speculation. Due to grand jury secrecy and the secrecy surrounding the FISA process, we don't know many of the details. And given the typical pace of these investigations, whatever happens likely will not happen quickly. ..."
Then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort at the Republican National Convention. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press)
Reports that the FBI wiretapped former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are a further sign of the seriousness of special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III's investigation. But there's still a great deal we don't know about the implications, if any, for the broader
inquiry into possible Russian ties to the Trump campaign.
CNN
reported
Monday night that the FBI obtained a warrant to listen in on Manafort's phone calls back in 2014. The warrant was part of an
investigation into U.S. firms that may have performed undisclosed work for the Ukrainian government. The surveillance reportedly
lapsed for a time but was begun again last year when the FBI learned about possible ties between Russian operatives and Trump associates.
This news is a big deal primarily because of what it takes to obtain such a wiretap order. The warrant reportedly was issued under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A FISA warrant requires investigators to demonstrate to the FISA court that there is probable
cause to believe the target may be acting as an unlawful foreign agent.
When
news broke last month that Mueller was using a grand jury to conduct his investigation, many reported it with unnecessary breathlessness.
Although a grand jury investigation is certainly significant, a prosecutor does not need court approval or a finding of probable
cause to issue a grand jury subpoena, and Mueller's use of a grand jury
was not unexpected .
A FISA warrant is another matter. It means investigators have demonstrated probable cause to an independent judicial authority.
Obtaining a warrant actually says much more about the strength of the underlying allegations than issuing a grand jury subpoena.
That's also why the search warrant
executed at Manafort's home in July was such a significant step in the investigation. Unlike a grand jury subpoena, the search
warrant required Mueller's team to demonstrate to a judge that a crime probably had been committed.
But it's important not to get too far in front of the story. The FBI surveillance of Manafort reportedly began in 2014, long before
he was working as Trump's campaign manager. So the initial allegations, at least, appear to have involved potential crimes having
nothing to do with the Trump campaign. And most or all of the surveillance apparently took place before Mueller was even appointed
and was not at his direction.
Mueller's involvement now does suggest that the current focus relates to Manafort's role in the Trump campaign. But we don't know
exactly how, if at all, any alleged crimes by Manafort relate to his work in that role. And we don't know whether any other individuals
involved in the campaign are potentially implicated.
We also don't know what evidence was obtained as a result of the surveillance. The fact that warrants were issued does not mean
any evidence of criminal conduct was actually found.
The other import of this news involves the possible implications if Manafort is charged. The New York Times
reported
Monday that when Manafort's home was searched in July, investigators told him he should expect to be indicted. Even if Mueller
were to indict Manafort for crimes not directly related to the Trump campaign, it would be a significant development. A typical
white-collar investigation often proceeds by building cases against lower-level participants in a scheme -- the little fish -- and
then persuading them to cooperate in the investigation of the bigger fish. Trump and his associates therefore may have reason to
be concerned about what Manafort could tell investigators, if he were indicted and chose to cooperate.
Again, much of this is speculation. Due to grand jury secrecy and the secrecy surrounding the FISA process, we don't know
many of the details. And given the typical pace of these investigations, whatever happens likely will not happen quickly.
But news of the FISA surveillance is the latest evidence that Mueller's investigation is serious, aggressive and will be with
us for some time.
Randall D. Eliason teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School.
Why they decided to resume investigation now ? What new facts were uncovered? What hidden storm
hit "deep state" so the for stability they need to sacrifice Hillary Clinton
How this correlates with the discovery that DNC paid for Steele dossier? Judging from
John Sipher a is
a former member of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service attempt
to defend Steele dossier in his
Slate article (Sept, 2017), just a month before current revelations. As retied CIA agents
usually avoid public spotlight it might well be that he was "adviced" to write his
evaluation and, if this is the case, then CIA and may be personally Brennan were also involved
in "Steele dossier" fiasco.
Notable quotes:
"... The ousted FBI director James Comey and the former attorney general Loretta Lynch spoke at length to Congress about that investigation last year, and it is the subject of a continuing review by the justice department's inspector general. ..."
"... Nunes has separately signed off on subpoenas that sought the banking records of Fusion GPS, the political research company behind a dossier of allegations about Trump's connections to Russia. A lawyer for the company said in a statement Tuesday the subpoena was "overly broad" and without any legitimate purposes ..."
The Republican leaders of the House judiciary and oversight panels said in a statement they were
opening investigations into the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation and the decision
not to prosecute her – the subject of hours-long congressional hearings last year.
The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Devin Nunes, also announced a separate
investigation into a uranium deal brokered during Barack Obama's tenure as president.
The House judiciary committee chairman, Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, and the oversight committee
chairman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said the inquiry would be aimed at the
FBI and its decisions in the Clinton investigation . The ousted FBI director James Comey
and the former attorney general Loretta Lynch spoke at length to Congress about that investigation
last year, and it is the subject of a continuing review by the justice department's inspector general.
The two panels have declined to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 elections, leaving
those inquiries to Senate committees and the House intelligence committee.
Nunes has separately signed off on subpoenas that sought the banking records of Fusion GPS,
the political research company behind a dossier of allegations about Trump's connections to Russia.
A lawyer for the company said in a statement Tuesday the subpoena was "overly broad" and without
any legitimate purposes.
This is great comment: " One fairly obvious point -- in response to your original post, not
the article itself -- is surely that the general consensus which united conservatives and liberals,
that neoliberal economics works, that war against weak countries can be waged on the cheap, and that
the local working class will always eat whatever excrement is put on their plates, has started to break
down. "
Notable quotes:
"... The Reactionary Mind ..."
"... The Art of the Deal ..."
"... TRUMP IS BY NO MEANS the first man of the right to reach that conclusion about capitalism, though he may be the first President to do so, at least since Teddy Roosevelt. A great many neoconservatives found themselves stranded on the same beach after the end of the cold war, as had many conservatives before that. But they always found a redeeming vision in the state. Not the welfare state or the "nanny state," but the State of high politics, national greatness, imperial leadership, and war; the state of Churchill and Bismarck. Given the menace of Trump's rhetoric, his fetish for pomp and love of grandeur, this state, too, would seem the natural terminus of his predilections. As his adviser Steve Bannon has said, "A country's more than an economy. We're a civic society." Yet on closer inspection, Trump's vision of the state looks less like the State than the deals he's not sure add up to much. ..."
"... Trump_vs_deep_state's inconsistency, lack of coherence and cult of personality brings to mind Juan Peron and Evita. ..."
"... The desire to make Trump anti-Semitic, and a fascist is a lot easier than recognizing he's a talented media manipulator devoid and any real convictions. The idea that 60 million Americans voted to elect a man who secretly wants to end elections is absurd on every level. He doesn't need to end elections, because elections are the ultimate ratings game. He brags endlessly that he beat all the professional politicians as a neophyte. ..."
"... When folks assert that Trump is all about surfaces, they say that as if it's a bad thing. The republican base supporting Trump, we have clearly learned, maintains no fidelity to the theologies expounded at the NRO and the AEI. Trump's inability to think about challenges in ways approved of by his critics confounds experts precisely because he's so effective. I can't believe he has less heft and gravitas than the light-bulb salesman Americans elected twice. He is simply the right guy with the right message for a specific time and place. He may morph into evil personified and I get the sense at times that some of his critics are keen to see just that. ..."
"... That Trump lacks much knowledge of public policy was clear during the campaign, and since being inaugurated he has remained uninterested in and ignorant of (sometimes amazingly so) the details of policy. One wonders if he even reads the exec orders he has been signing. Your support of someone so manifestly unsuited to be president, by virtue of his vast ignorance if nothing else, was puzzling during the campaign and remains so. Btw, what "great society experiments" are you talking about? Have you heard of the '96 welfare 'reform' law? ..."
"... Trump has defended an isolationist foreign policy, attacking Nafta, Nato, the WTO etc. Given his erratic behavior, he has not followed through on this (yet?) but the departure with the previous mainstream consensus is radical. The mainstream left and right, at least since two decades, had been very much internationalist. ..."
"... During the campaign Trump has defended some form of social welfare state and more government intervention in the economy: e.g. his defense of Social Security, or even maternity leave, and his support for infrastructure. I do not think he really cares about this stuff and so he is probably not going to follow through. ..."
"... It's also very anti-historical. Inasmuch as conservatism is, among other things, a defense of hierarchy , it can (and did, at one time) appeal to millennia of precedent. ..."
"... Something can be deeply wrong, i.e. immoral, without being the product of a cognitive abnormality, and people can commit evil acts and hold evil beliefs without being mentally or psychologically impaired. To attribute all retrograde political acts and beliefs to an individual's deficient "theory of mind" (whatever that means exactly) is sociologically naive, psychologically untenable, and historically invalid. ..."
"... One fairly obvious point -- in response to your original post, not the article itself -- is surely that the general consensus which united conservatives and liberals, that neoliberal economics works, that war against weak countries can be waged on the cheap, and that the local working class will always eat whatever excrement is put on their plates, has started to break down. ..."
"... Trump is a right-wing bullshitter, Clinton is a liberal bullshitter; there's nothing really new about that (much the same sort of thing happened with those who continued to support the consensus during the Great Depression). ..."
"... When Obama failed to embody the forward-looking ideals he campaigned on, some people checked out, but you can trace clear lines of mass disillusionment and radicalization from 2008 to Occupy and BLM to the Sanders campaign. ..."
"... The question was never if there was an appetite for real leftism in the American electorate (Clinton and Trump's unconvincing plagiarism of Sanders talking points are telling here, I think), but whether the Democratic party, mired as it's been in institutional rot and complacency, would ever tolerate true economic leftism when the "social liberalism" of identity and representation seemed to work well enough and was so much less threatening to the moneyed interests that financed the party's rightward swing. ..."
"... For decades, the left wing of the Democratic party has been cajoled into voting for "liberal" candidates that resemble nothing so much as the old aristocratic Whigs who used to discuss ways to help the less fortunate over claret and cigars down at the gentlemen's club. ..."
"... I don't think there's any going back to the neocon/neolib era and I think even a lot of moderate Republicans (who used to rely on friendly financiers like Romney to keep the rabid right on-leash) are beginning to realize it. After all, what's the point of selling out if it doesn't buy you anything? ..."
"... The neo-cons are out: Bill Kristol, Max Boot and company are sworn enemies of the administration. Democratic party neocons like HRC can longer launch democracy-building projects in the middle east. Long may this continue. ..."
"... Calling 60 million Trump voters racist and/or fascist might feel good, but as Mark Lilla sensibly observes, identity politics is Reagan's trickle-down economics for liberals, self-delusion for folks out of answers. The 'solutions' for poor, black families in crisis on this thread illustrate clearly why so many black voters in Michigan and elsewhere stayed home. Folks without work, safe schools, and much hope want solutions – not 'this study says' or 'but, Republicans.'' ..."
"... Donald Trump is president because the Democratic party abandoned the poorest, white and black, not because 60 million Americans are actually fascists. ..."
"... It's the sort of completely insane projection that falls apart at the most cursory examination, to wit: the entire notion of destroying a public, universal service like secondary (and post-secondary, in many cases) education in order to hand the system over to unscrupulous profiteers is [extremely Zizek voice]PURE NEOLIBERALISM[/extremely Zizek voice]. ..."
"... What we have, and what Trump_vs_deep_state is merely one symptom of, is a massive crisis in public governance. In large part, the people who are responsible for said governance brought it on themselves. ..."
"... Race is one the primary axes of American politics, and our reluctance to fund basic public goods cannot be understood without acknowledging this basic fact. ..."
"... there's absolutely no daylight whatsoever between "mainstream" Republicans and Trump when it comes to the lust for war: ..."
"... Having discovered this fact which so many slogans obscure, we might well wonder whether it is quite correct to look upon capitalism as a social form sui generis or, in fact, as anything else but the last stage of the decomposition of what we have called feudalism. ..."
"... The thing is, Trump is an owner who's there because he's finished with that political crap. At this point, we probably have to hope that some general has the spine to tell Trump no, the US army really is not a very good military force for anything that involves taking casualties, which means it is fairly useless for actually conquering anything, as opposed to laying waste in endless campaigns. But the spirit of West Point, the school of treason that produced many, many, many more fighters against America than the CPUSA ever did, still rules. I'm not very hopeful. ..."
"... This is a legitimacy crisis. It is not as if Clinton partisans did not call Trump's electoral legitimacy into question. Half the country think Russian "meddling" determined the result, when it is not clear any "meddling" happened. ..."
"... Yes, Americans have lost their collective mind, politically. I know several elderly people (not much more elderly than me, truth to tell) who consume anti-Trump screeds from Seth Meyers or Rachel Maddow on a daily basis. It is entertainment I suppose, but it does not inform them or improve their critical thinking skills. One, a transplanted Englishman, described Maddow to me the other day as "erudite". ..."
"... The relentless flood tide of propaganda in American politics makes it exceedingly hard to talk with any American realistically about what is going on, because so much of what is going is exists not as objective and verified facts, but as shared, tendentious narratives. The actual Trump seems to me to be a bit of a personal mess and an authoritarian in the same mode as the blowhards who hang out at the barbershop; the Trump constructed by, say, Maddow's televised narratives is something else, something more imagined than real. The imagined Trump has to be bigger, to be fitted with cheap hyperbole. ..."
"... An essential element of the propaganda narrative is the "distance" to the other. The "base of Trump supporters" is a prop. Wondering what "they" could be thinking but not waiting for an answer before launching scorn and ridicule on the way to slander is a method. ..."
"... No Layman, there is plenty of irrefutable evidence that Clinton is a militarist who strongly believes in force and the threat of force, especially when it comes to the ME – and this plays just fine with the Democratic party establishment, actually it's a necessity considering the donor base. Clinton's stance towards Iran and the nuclear deal is a matter of record. Next time don't nominate a warmonger who voted for the Iraq war if you want to prevent someone like Trump – and hey, maybe young people will trust you again. ..."
"... There is no "real" Trump narrative; narratives are imagined stories, constructed according to principles of dramatic art to create meaning and morality. With effort, it is possible to anchor a narrative to facts, and to do so by methods that limit violence to the objectivity of facts. Whether a well-anchored narrative is persuasive may be important to such enterprises as the operation of law or even the progress of science. ..."
"... Our famously free press (spoken sarcastically) is thought to provide a check; fact-check columns proliferate at times, but mostly prove how weak an instrument of the public interest, a Media run by massive corporations and financially dependent on corporate business advertising is. ..."
"... A common practice now is to lead with counterfactuals: narratives in which the place of facts is taken by theory and theory's constructions. "Because the whole thing is basically a fantasy, nothing will disprove it." ..."
"... My political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state is that this is what conservative politics unchecked, unopposed and not responsible to any mass constituency produces. Trump says anything. But, it has been twenty years since anyone in politics has been held to account for anything said, except for "gotcha" moments of mostly fake outrage. Not that we would have a gotcha moment for Bush's war crimes. But that is my point. Holding Clinton up as a standard of normalcy in politics runs into exactly this same problem: she talks in the political code words, takes no responsibility for policy consequences and shows every sign of greed and irresponsibility, but the counterfactual of her normalcy is still set forward, with no awareness that it is a groundless narrative. This is not a point about Clinton or Trump, but it is a point about a political process that produces a lot of stupid and Trump is a bonus. ..."
"... Through the book, he traces the many potential problems that the 'personalization' of media might bring. Most germane to this discussion, he raised the point that if every one of the billion News Feeds is different, how can anyone understand what other people are seeing and responding to? 'The most serious political problem posed by filter bubbles is that they make it increasingly difficult to have a public argument.' " ..."
"... I stand by my belief that Trump built a public persona as a race-baiting, loudmouth buffoon that carried him straight into the WH despite a fervent, well-funded bi-partisan effort to unseat him from the time he declared up right to the present. Studying the buffoon tells us practically nothing about the individual. He's ordinary, capable, ambitious, avaricious, and mired in the world of the senses rather than the mind. There are worse traits and places to be. ..."
"... what I always find grotesque about the accusations of Russian meddling is the full ticket obliviousness to all the meddling the US used to perform in Russian elections, and in fact in many other elections worldwide. It's quite a sorry sight to see people like you make a fuss about very minor activities (if there's even evidence of any), without as much as a shred of self awareness. ..."
"... If people want a sane non- militaristic foreign policy it's going to take more than just opposition to Trump. You are also going to have to oppose some of Trump's opponents in both parties. The one time Trump received positive feedback and praise from many in the Beltway was when he bombed Syria. ..."
"... Why are people talking about Hillary here, on a thread about Trump and conservatism? Because a plausible argument can be made that Hillary is more of conservative than Trump, at least in terms of neo-conservative politics. She has, after all, two neo-con wars under her belt already and enjoys good relations with all the really wrong people. Her avarice and willingness to tell tales are at least comparable to Trump's. But perhaps the best reason Hillary belongs here is because many believe that had a less conservative Democrat than Hillary run (Bernie, for example), Dems would have won and Donald Trump would be yesterday's news. ..."
October 12, 2017 The magazine n+1 is running an
excerpt
from the second edition of The Reactionary Mind , which comes out next week but is
available for purchase now . The n+1 piece is titled "The Triumph of the Shill: The
political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state." It's my most considered reflection on what Trump_vs_deep_state represents, based
on a close reading of The Art of the Deal (yes, I know he didn't write it, but it's far
more revelatory of the man and what he thinks than even its ghostwriter realized) and some of his
other writings and speeches, as well as the record of Trump's first six months in office.
Here are some excerpts from the excerpt, but I hope you'll buy the book, too. It's got a lot of
new material, particularly about the economic ideas of the right. And a long, long chapter on Trump
and Trump_vs_deep_state.
... ... ...
This is what makes Trump's economic philosophy, such as it is, so peculiar and of its moment.
An older generation of economic Darwinists, from William Graham Sumner to Ayn Rand, believed without
reservation in the secular miracle of the market. It wasn't just the contest that was glorious;
the outcome was, too. That conviction burned in them like a holy fire. Trump, by contrast, subscribes
and unsubscribes to that vision. The market is a moment of truth -- and an eternity of lies.
It reveals; it hides. It is everything; it is nothing. Rand grounded her vision of capitalism
in A is A; Trump grounds his in A is not A.
TRUMP IS BY NO MEANS the first man of the right to reach that conclusion about capitalism,
though he may be the first President to do so, at least since Teddy Roosevelt. A great many neoconservatives
found themselves stranded on the same beach after the end of the cold war, as had many conservatives
before that. But they always found a redeeming vision in the state. Not the welfare state or the
"nanny state," but the State of high politics, national greatness, imperial leadership, and war;
the state of Churchill and Bismarck. Given the menace of Trump's rhetoric, his fetish for pomp
and love of grandeur, this state, too, would seem the natural terminus of his predilections. As
his adviser Steve Bannon has said, "A country's more than an economy. We're a civic society."
Yet on closer inspection, Trump's vision of the state looks less like the State than the deals
he's not sure add up to much.
I'll be doing a bunch of interviews about the book, including one with our very own Henry, so
keep an eye out at my blog for more information
on that.
Dr. Hilarius 10.12.17 at 4:54 am (no link)
Trump_vs_deep_state's inconsistency, lack of coherence and cult of personality brings to mind Juan Peron
and Evita.
kidneystones 10.12.17 at 2:19 pm (no link)
@12 The desire to make Trump anti-Semitic, and a fascist is a lot easier than recognizing
he's a talented media manipulator devoid and any real convictions. The idea that 60 million Americans
voted to elect a man who secretly wants to end elections is absurd on every level. He doesn't
need to end elections, because elections are the ultimate ratings game. He brags endlessly that
he beat all the professional politicians as a neophyte.
He looks certain at this point to thread the needle for 2020 at the expense of both Republicans
and Democrats. He may very well simplify the tax code and get rather more done in his second year
in office. His first year has and will be devoted to pure survival – defending his corner and
maintaining his base. Trump supporters, myself included, are anti-politician, and unsympathetic
to faction and ideology, which is part of the reason I really do question Corey's efforts to make
Trump part of a conservative movement.
When folks assert that Trump is all about surfaces, they say that as if it's a bad thing.
The republican base supporting Trump, we have clearly learned, maintains no fidelity to the theologies
expounded at the NRO and the AEI. Trump's inability to think about challenges in ways approved
of by his critics confounds experts precisely because he's so effective. I can't believe he has
less heft and gravitas than the light-bulb salesman Americans elected twice. He is simply the
right guy with the right message for a specific time and place. He may morph into evil personified
and I get the sense at times that some of his critics are keen to see just that.
Every time Hillary Clinton opens her mouth to utter another blatant falsehood, I feel better
about the results of 2016. There is, as Corey notes, an emptiness at the heart of the conservative
movement. The same can be said of liberals who are, if anything, in even greater disarray than
conservatives. The great society experiments yield, in 2016, appalling failure rates among America's
African-American youth to follow decades of failure as the African-American family unit dis-integrates.
Liberals are all out of answers, as are theological conservatives. Perhaps the reality is that
ordinary Americans, and others across the globe, are actually far less polarized than the pundits
tell us.
We might very well go down some ugly path to war and disaster, but is seems to me just as likely
that life will actually go on much as it has, only with fewer wars and slightly more charity towards
each other. Cause just yammering about the blah-blah-blah is getting mighty old.
LFC 10.12.17 at 5:03 pm (no link)
kidneystones @15 That Trump lacks much knowledge of public policy was clear during the campaign, and since
being inaugurated he has remained uninterested in and ignorant of (sometimes amazingly so) the
details of policy. One wonders if he even reads the exec orders he has been signing. Your support
of someone so manifestly unsuited to be president, by virtue of his vast ignorance if nothing
else, was puzzling during the campaign and remains so. Btw, what "great society experiments" are
you talking about? Have you heard of the '96 welfare 'reform' law?
LFC 10.12.17 at 5:10 pm (no link)
p.s. In terms of ignorant presidents in recent memory, Reagan and G.W. Bush come close to Trump,
but Trump outdoes them. (Though in a competition on that score between Reagan and Trump, it might
be close to a tie.)
As far as I can tell, your claim so far (in this and other posts) is that Trump should be seen
first of all as a conservative: those who see him as a radical break from US conservatism have
an idealized version of what the GOP and the right have actually been throughout their history.*
I tend to agree with this (e.g. the GOP has been very racist since many decades) but with two
important qualifications that I have never seen you make:
a) Trump has defended an isolationist foreign policy, attacking Nafta, Nato, the WTO etc.
Given his erratic behavior, he has not followed through on this (yet?) but the departure with
the previous mainstream consensus is radical. The mainstream left and right, at least since two
decades, had been very much internationalist.
b) During the campaign Trump has defended some form of social welfare state and more government
intervention in the economy: e.g. his defense of Social Security, or even maternity leave, and
his support for infrastructure. I do not think he really cares about this stuff and so he is probably
not going to follow through. Given his general cluelessness, he is also captured by the various
randians who populate the GOP ranks. But, differently from many politicians on the right, in primis
the randians, Trump has some sense for what people want. And in the campaign he said it, possibly
opening up the field for future Keynesians republicans.
*You hedge this view a bit in this post, by considering Trump's view of the market.
Collin Street thinks that conservatism is some kind of organic affliction, that conservatives
all have something wrong with their brain chemistry or biology, that they are all cognitively
abnormal. This is absurd.
It's also very anti-historical. Inasmuch as conservatism is, among other things, a defense
of hierarchy , it can (and did, at one time) appeal to millennia of precedent. Were the believers
in the divine right of monarchs mentally abnormal? Were those who believed (and continue to believe)
that employers have a right to exploit their workers mentally ill? Were, to take an even starker
example, proponents of slavery psychologically impaired? If so, how to account for the fact that
slavery was close to universal among human societies until fairly recently in the history of the
species? Were the vast majority of humans all psychologically impaired until some date of enlightenment
(pick your date or century)?
Something can be deeply wrong, i.e. immoral, without being the product of a cognitive abnormality,
and people can commit evil acts and hold evil beliefs without being mentally or psychologically
impaired. To attribute all retrograde political acts and beliefs to an individual's deficient
"theory of mind" (whatever that means exactly) is sociologically naive, psychologically untenable,
and historically invalid.
One fairly obvious point -- in response to your original post, not the article itself -- is
surely that the general consensus which united conservatives and liberals, that neoliberal economics
works, that war against weak countries can be waged on the cheap, and that the local working class
will always eat whatever excrement is put on their plates, has started to break down.
The alternatives seem to be to change the consensus, or spread bullshit that the consensus
is OK but just needs to be tweaked a bit. Trump is a right-wing bullshitter, Clinton is a
liberal bullshitter; there's nothing really new about that (much the same sort of thing happened
with those who continued to support the consensus during the Great Depression).
This excerpt seems to take a fairly dim view of the left and what it's had to offer in recent
years, and I can't say I really disagree, but I think Corey is underestimating the extent to which
a leftist resurgence is already underway. I still think 2008 was a turning point, not because
Obama himself really represented a new view of American liberalism (frankly, I think a hypothetical
Gore or Kerry administration would have been extremely similar to what we got from Obama), but
because the energy people invested in Obama's vision of America has never really dissipated. I
think liberals are liberals in large part because they prefer futurism to nostalgia, so it shouldn't
have been surprising that the candidate of "hope and change" beat a candidate whose political
persona is frozen in the mid-90s.
When Obama failed to embody the forward-looking ideals he campaigned on, some people checked
out, but you can trace clear lines of mass disillusionment and radicalization from 2008 to Occupy
and BLM to the Sanders campaign.
The question was never if there was an appetite for real leftism in the American electorate
(Clinton and Trump's unconvincing plagiarism of Sanders talking points are telling here, I think),
but whether the Democratic party, mired as it's been in institutional rot and complacency, would
ever tolerate true economic leftism when the "social liberalism" of identity and representation
seemed to work well enough and was so much less threatening to the moneyed interests that financed
the party's rightward swing.
For decades, the left wing of the Democratic party has been cajoled into voting for "liberal"
candidates that resemble nothing so much as the old aristocratic Whigs who used to discuss ways
to help the less fortunate over claret and cigars down at the gentlemen's club. We put up
with it because we were told that was the only way to keep Republican robber barons from reinstating
white male supremacy, criminalizing poverty, and declaring war on human decency. Trump was the
embodiment of that venal reactionary bogeyman and Clinton was supposed to be the bullwark of reason
and common sense -- the "electable" candidate -- that kept the far right at bay. George W. Bush
was a decent-seeming guy whose dad was president. Losing to him was tolerable if frustrating,
but Clinton losing feels like a broken promise, like the deal with the devil we made back in '92
is now null and void and it's time for something new.
I don't think there's any going back to the neocon/neolib era and I think even a lot of
moderate Republicans (who used to rely on friendly financiers like Romney to keep the rabid right
on-leash) are beginning to realize it. After all, what's the point of selling out if it doesn't
buy you anything?
"We came, we saw, he died – ha-ha-ha" is not president, and African-Americans are no longer
chained to the ineffective policies of the Democratic party and teachers unions. The neo-cons
are out: Bill Kristol, Max Boot and company are sworn enemies of the administration. Democratic
party neocons like HRC can longer launch democracy-building projects in the middle east. Long
may this continue.
A sociopath can be very good at reading and manipulating others. Having a theory of mind
is quite distinct from having empathy, and having empathy is quite distinct from using it pervasively
to guide personal/social/political life.
There's a few simple tricks, is the only word that works, I think, that you can do without
needing any insight into how people work. Stuff like being silent and letting people run their
mouth out, or being vague so that you can redefine what you meant post-facto and claiming success,
or the gish-gallop technique or a few other rhetorical tricks that can be used to confuse/blindside
people in various ways.
Power-sales techniques and what-have-you.
"Tricks", because if they work they work by mechanical rule-following and if people know enough
to recognise them they don't work at all. You don't need particular insight to use any of these,
you just need an audience that doesn't recognise them and isn't told about them. A lot
of the communication ones, in particular, rely on abuse of normal discourse structures/pragmatics,
which means that they're actually things that people with autism-spectrum conditions -- that severely
disrupt normal pragmatic structures -- might stumble into by, literally, accident.
With a drive to succeed and a handful of these tricks you can -- with luck, and we only hear
about the successes: there's an old technique for building a reputation that starts by sending
out 1024 letters that A will happen, and another 1024 saying the exact opposite -- build a small
fortune. But if you run into more-experienced players who can recognise the tricks you're using,
then you're not going to succeed against them, and it might go badly for you. Or they might give
you a half-million in fuck-off money just to get you out of their way, and you'd probably think
yourself awesome for getting it.
But since I haven't read a lot of Burke I need to decide, provisionally, whether to go with
the view that e.g. Reflections on the Revolution in France is a manifestation of "autism" or whether
to go with the view that it's a statement and elaboration of the author's political convictions.
I can't exactly see how the two descriptions you've provided are incompatible; can you explain
why you feel you need to decide, why do you feel that they can't both be true?
Calling 60 million Trump voters racist and/or fascist might feel good, but as Mark Lilla
sensibly observes, identity politics is Reagan's trickle-down economics for liberals, self-delusion
for folks out of answers. The 'solutions' for poor, black families in crisis on this thread illustrate
clearly why so many black voters in Michigan and elsewhere stayed home. Folks without work, safe
schools, and much hope want solutions – not 'this study says' or 'but, Republicans.''
America's cities are under Democratic control, for the most part, and the studies, the plans,
and the programs, and the teachers' unions haven't got the job done, unless creating a cycle of
failure and illiteracy qualifies as some form of progress, or success.
Donald Trump is president because the Democratic party abandoned the poorest, white and
black, not because 60 million Americans are actually fascists.
If Democrats can't provide solutions for ordinary people at the state, local and national level
the party is going to continue to keep losing elections.
"Both Left and Right concurred in the very shallow notion that National Socialism was merely a
version of Conservatism". Orwell in his review of "Mein Kampf".
Ah, there it is, the good shit, the barely-warmed-over Manhattan Institute talking points that
the conservative lie machine has been pushing for ages.
It's the sort of completely insane projection that falls apart at the most cursory examination,
to wit: the entire notion of destroying a public, universal service like secondary (and post-secondary,
in many cases) education in order to hand the system over to unscrupulous profiteers is [extremely
Zizek voice]PURE NEOLIBERALISM[/extremely Zizek voice].
It is exactly the kind of short-sighted maneuver that Democrats have been pulling for decades
now, trying to get "moderate" Republicans in the suburbs to vote for them, and its only effect
has been to undermine the concept of public education entirely. Some of the most vigorous advocates
of charter schools and union-busting have been Democrats, for fuck's sake! A nonexhaustive list:
Joel Klein, Arne Duncan, Rahm Emmanuel, and these are just the first three I could think of off
the top of my head; I guarantee that I could find you an list as long as your arm if I tried.
Top Democratic donors such as those from Silicon Valley and Wall Street are gung-ho about charter
schools and other similar scams like "online education." In the meantime, the actual research
shows that at best, charter schools are a wash in terms of performance and at worst they are basically
a fraud perpetrated upon both taxpayers and students in order to shovel money to people like DeVos.
What we have, and what Trump_vs_deep_state is merely one symptom of, is a massive crisis in public
governance. In large part, the people who are responsible for said governance brought it on themselves.
On the right-wing side, a propaganda machine has existed since the 1950s to sell people various
poisonous ideas (regulation is bad! the "free market" is good!) dressed up, in the best of times,
in quasi-academic language, and in the worst of times as just plain racism. The retreat from public
services that took place in the South once those services would have to be integrated is a great
tell; wealthy Virginians literally closed the entire state's public school system rather
than have to attend school with black children. On the center-left, the entire New Democrat generation
drank the idiot Kool-Aid that demanded we turn over anything and everything to market forces but!
with a slightly more advanced degree of wokeness. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the CTU, under a predominantly
black and Latino leadership, has been
at the forefront (PDF) of fighting privatization and the attendant segregation that follows
it, demanding resources from the austerity-mad Emmanuel administration so they can actually do
their jobs. Said fight, I should add, taking place with the support of the predominantly African-American
communities that are currently being brutalized by Rahm, so maybe if you care about black agency
as much as you claim you do (hahahaha) you might take that into account.
The Democratic party has not been nearly as good to the African-American community as the latter's
loyalty to the former (or, really, as basic justice) would seem to require, but the failure has
not been "too much Great Society programs" or "too many unionized teachers." That's tendentious,
ahistorical horseshit. The real failure has been the Democratic willingness to cast its most solid
coalition partner again and again into a racist market system in which they have to fight uphill
battles every step of the way. That Democrats are still a preferable alternative to the open eliminationism
of Trump supporters is not particularly to their credit, not when entire Democratic administrations
have failed to protect African-Americans from predatory lending or housing and workplace discrimination
or being killed by police officers or even do so much as keep them from being forced to drink
lead-tainted water.
Race is one the primary axes of American politics, and our reluctance to fund basic public
goods cannot be understood without acknowledging this basic fact. Lots of white people, but
especially the petit bourgeoisie that constitutes the core of Republican voters (who are, shock
of shocks, also the core of Trump voters), would rather eat dirt if it means that a black person
somewhere will have to eat shit, and unfortunately for all of us, the idiotic electoral system
we inherited from the slavers played to their advantage in this electoral cycle. Now Trump is
going to decertify the Iran deal so go take your "hurrrr neocons out" nonsense and shove it up
your ass, because all the same fucking lunatics who want to turn the Middle East into glass are
still in charge everywhere and a literally demented person holds the nuclear codes because showing
the libs whatfor is the only ideal that white middle America is even capable of processing anymore.
JRLRC 61 Thanks for some historical perspective. Reading this thread makes me give up hope for
the American Republic. Your leader misses no opportunity to exhibit contempt for democracy, contempt
for the rule of law, contempt for international treaty obligations, contempt for the UN world
order, contempt for diplomacy, contempt for truth, contempt for science, a guy who in real time
threatens to start a nuclear world war (remember CR wrote a whole post dismissing the idea that
Trump was reckless), and you people explain him away as just another conservative? Have you really
no sense of history? Frankly you must be out of your minds.
"We have seen that the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of
production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility
for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source
of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on This
social function is already losing importance and is bound to lose it at an accelerating rate in
the future even if the economic process itself of which entrepreneurship was the prime mover went
on unabated. economic progress tends to become depersonalized and automatized. (p.132)
"Of old, roughly up to and including the Napoleonic Wars, generalship meant leadership and
success meant the personal success of the man in command who earned corresponding "profits" in
terms of social prestige This is no longer so. Rationalized and specialized office work will eventually
blot out personality, the calculable result, the "vision." The leading man no longer has the opportunity
to fling himself into the fray. He is becoming just another office worker -- and one who is not
always difficult to replace. in the last analysis the same social process -- undermines the role
and, along with the role, the social position of the capitalist entrepreneur. His role, though
less glamorous than that of medieval warlords, great or small, also is or was just another form
of individual leadership acting by virtue of personal force and personal responsibility for success
(p.133)
" contrasting the figure of the industrialist or merchant with that of the medieval lord. The
latter's "profession" not only qualified him admirably for the defense of his own class interest
-- he was not only able to fight for it physically -- but it also cast a halo around him and made
of him a ruler of men Of the industrialist and merchant the opposite is true. There is surely
no trace of any mystic glamour about him which is what counts in the ruling of men. The stock
exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail. We have seen that the industrialist and merchant,
as far as they are entrepreneurs, also fill a function of leadership. But economic leadership
of this type does not readily expand, like the medieval lord's military leadership, into the leadership
of nations. On the contrary, the ledger and the cost calculation absorb and confine He can only
use rationalist and unheroic means to defend his position or to bend a nation to his will. He
can impress by what people may expect from his economic performance, he can argue his case, he
can promise to pay out money or threaten to withhold it, he can hire the treacherous services
of a condottiere or politician or journalist. But that is all and all of it is greatly overrated
as to its political value the bourgeois class is ill equipped to face the problems, both domestic
and international, that have normally to be faced by a country of any importance. (pp.137-8)
" capitalist policies wrought destruction much beyond what was unavoidable. They attacked the
artisan in reservations in which he could have survived for an indefinite time. They forced upon
the peasant all the blessings of early liberalism -- the free and unsheltered holding and all
the individualist rope he needed in order to hang himself In breaking down the pre-capitalist
framework of society, capitalism thus broke not only barriers that impeded its progress but also
flying buttresses that prevented its collapse. That process, impressive in its relentless necessity,
was not merely a matter of removing institutional deadwood, but of removing partners of the capitalist
stratum, symbiosis with whom was an essential element of the capitalist schema. Having discovered
this fact which so many slogans obscure, we might well wonder whether it is quite correct to look
upon capitalism as a social form sui generis or, in fact, as anything else but the last stage
of the decomposition of what we have called feudalism." (p.139)
Schumpeter, from Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, ch. 7
Jerry Vinokurov@71 writes "there's absolutely no daylight whatsoever between 'mainstream' Republicans
and Trump when it comes to the lust for war "
This is overly optimistic in a way, yet overly pessimistic in another. For the first, there's
no daylight between Trump and "mainstream" Democrats when it comes to a lust for war.
For the second? It's clear both parties would support Trump if he ordered a decapitation strike
on North Korea, and it's likely both parties would support Trump if it failed and turned into
an all-out conflagration, no matter the fallout. But, the last president apt to such unilateral
war-making was Richard Nixon, and he was impeached for also discarding the two-party deal (a no
no on par with a Mexican President taking a second term.) Before the fact, however, there are
straws in the wind about impeachment, from the Washington Post op-ed, columnists Rubin and Waldman,
and "rumors" reported in Vanity Fair. Not a bright prospect, to be sure, no daylight at all?
The thing is, Trump is an owner who's there because he's finished with that political crap.
At this point, we probably have to hope that some general has the spine to tell Trump no, the
US army really is not a very good military force for anything that involves taking casualties,
which means it is fairly useless for actually conquering anything, as opposed to laying waste
in endless campaigns. But the spirit of West Point, the school of treason that produced many,
many, many more fighters against America than the CPUSA ever did, still rules. I'm not very hopeful.
I recall a story that Nixon boasted that after he was finished, they'd never make things like
they were again. That's the political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state. Today, when people will seriously argue
that Nixon was a liberal president, there is no ruling class appetite for democracy, old style
or bourgeois or what have you.
b9n10nt @68 links to Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates knows perfectly well that if the black voters
had turned out in larger numbers, Clinton would have won the Electoral College as well. People
trying to normalize Trump are not alone, Every single black voter who didn't see any difference
between Clinton and Trump agrees. Clinton tried to make the campaign about a symbolic endorsement
of anti-racism and anti-sexism, as opposed to the deplorables. Millions of black voters proved
they were having none of it. They stayed home.
OP: "conservatives have breached norms, flouted decorum, assailed elites, and shattered orthodoxy
throughout the ages." But is that not also exactly what anti-conservatives – progressives, revolutionaries
– have done? Or is it the wrong sort of breaching, flouting, assailing, shattering when conservatives,
not your friends, do it; but SOP when your friends do it?
Or are you maintaining that respectable norm-adhering, decorum-maintaining, elite-sustaining,
deeply orthodox left-wingers have always been the vast majority of anti-conservatives?
On further thought: elite-sustaining, yes, maybe, if you regard the nomenklatura as elite.
Orthodox also, for their own kind of orthodoxy.
None of this is intended to imply support for the remarkable Trump.
I wonder if that qualifies as push-polling? Is asking the question propaganda? This is
a legitimacy crisis. It is not as if Clinton partisans did not call Trump's electoral legitimacy
into question. Half the country think Russian "meddling" determined the result, when it is not
clear any "meddling" happened.
nastywoman
Yes, Americans have lost their collective mind, politically. I know several elderly people
(not much more elderly than me, truth to tell) who consume anti-Trump screeds from Seth Meyers
or Rachel Maddow on a daily basis. It is entertainment I suppose, but it does not inform them
or improve their critical thinking skills. One, a transplanted Englishman, described Maddow to
me the other day as "erudite".
The relentless flood tide of propaganda in American politics makes it exceedingly hard
to talk with any American realistically about what is going on, because so much of what is going
is exists not as objective and verified facts, but as shared, tendentious narratives. The actual
Trump seems to me to be a bit of a personal mess and an authoritarian in the same mode as the
blowhards who hang out at the barbershop; the Trump constructed by, say, Maddow's televised narratives
is something else, something more imagined than real. The imagined Trump has to be bigger, to
be fitted with cheap hyperbole.
An essential element of the propaganda narrative is the "distance" to the other. The "base
of Trump supporters" is a prop. Wondering what "they" could be thinking but not waiting for an
answer before launching scorn and ridicule on the way to slander is a method.
No Layman, there is plenty of irrefutable evidence that Clinton is a militarist who strongly
believes in force and the threat of force, especially when it comes to the ME – and this plays
just fine with the Democratic party establishment, actually it's a necessity considering the donor
base. Clinton's stance towards Iran and the nuclear deal is a matter of record. Next time don't
nominate a warmonger who voted for the Iraq war if you want to prevent someone like Trump – and
hey, maybe young people will trust you again.
There is no "real" Trump narrative; narratives are imagined stories, constructed according
to principles of dramatic art to create meaning and morality. With effort, it is possible to anchor
a narrative to facts, and to do so by methods that limit violence to the objectivity of facts.
Whether a well-anchored narrative is persuasive may be important to such enterprises as the operation
of law or even the progress of science.
In politics, the absence of the restraints imposed by institutions of law or science (which
often fail their purposes even in those domains) invite the practice of dark arts of propaganda
and mass manipulation. Our famously free press (spoken sarcastically) is thought to provide
a check; fact-check columns proliferate at times, but mostly prove how weak an instrument of the
public interest, a Media run by massive corporations and financially dependent on corporate business
advertising is.
A common practice now is to lead with counterfactuals: narratives in which the place of
facts is taken by theory and theory's constructions. "Because the whole thing is basically a fantasy,
nothing will disprove it."
Last week's New Yorker has a profile of Rachel Maddow.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/rachel-maddow-trumps-tv-nemesis
Janet Malcolm is full of praise for Maddow. For what she identifies, correctly, as entertainment.
She does not comment on whether political comment as entertainment makes for a healthy politics.
I think not.
My political theory of Trump_vs_deep_state is that this is what conservative politics unchecked, unopposed
and not responsible to any mass constituency produces. Trump says anything. But, it has been twenty
years since anyone in politics has been held to account for anything said, except for "gotcha"
moments of mostly fake outrage. Not that we would have a gotcha moment for Bush's war crimes.
But that is my point. Holding Clinton up as a standard of normalcy in politics runs into exactly
this same problem: she talks in the political code words, takes no responsibility for policy consequences
and shows every sign of greed and irresponsibility, but the counterfactual of her normalcy is
still set forward, with no awareness that it is a groundless narrative. This is not a point about
Clinton or Trump, but it is a point about a political process that produces a lot of stupid and
Trump is a bonus.
I was not intending to distinguish actual from real, if that was a question. I was intending
to distinguish objectively factual statements or descriptive observation from arguments taking
the form of narratives, particularly projective or counterfactual narratives that seem distant
from or untethered in the main from verifiable fact.
I think it is possible to make value judgments closely related to factual observation, without
projecting a narrative into the future or into an alternate reality.
Whether my statements characterizing Trump constitute a narrative or rely on narrative to justify
value judgments is a fine point I do not see the point in arguing at this time. I would not defend
my observations and judgment as constituting the one "true story".
"Eli Pariser's The Filter Bubble became the most widely cited distillation of the effects Facebook
and other internet platforms could have on public discourse. Pariser began the book research when
he noticed conservative people, whom he'd befriended on the platform despite his left-leaning
politics, had disappeared from his News Feed. "I was still clicking my progressive friends' links
more than my conservative friends' -- and links to the latest Lady Gaga videos more than either,"
he wrote. 'So no conservative links for me.'
Through the book, he traces the many potential problems that the 'personalization' of media
might bring. Most germane to this discussion, he raised the point that if every one of the billion
News Feeds is different, how can anyone understand what other people are seeing and responding
to? 'The most serious political problem posed by filter bubbles is that they make it increasingly
difficult to have a public argument.' "
I think everyone here agrees we have problems to address. If the solutions I supported most
of my life were working in places such as California, I wouldn't feel the need for radical change.
Had the Democratic candidate not supported the Iraq war, alongside Biden, McCain et al, and then
'learned' her lesson by violent regime-change in Libya (described by Obama as a 'shit-show'),
and then embarked upon program of cash collection from the powerful and secrecy towards her coronation,
I might have wavered back towards the Dems. Bernie would have drawn me like a magnet. But given
the choice between the devil I know and the one I don't I choose the latter. Trump may yet screw
things up and people are free to disagree about his skills and solutions.
It's pretty easy today to forget that both Bill and Hillary attended Trump's (most recent)
wedding. Their daughter Chelsea is/was a good friend of Ivanka Trump (a convert to Judaism) and
her husband. The criticism of bedrock conservatives repeatedly loudly and publicly even today,
is that Trump is more of a Democrat than a conservative.
I stand by my belief that Trump built a public persona as a race-baiting, loudmouth buffoon
that carried him straight into the WH despite a fervent, well-funded bi-partisan effort to unseat
him from the time he declared up right to the present. Studying the buffoon tells us practically
nothing about the individual. He's ordinary, capable, ambitious, avaricious, and mired in the
world of the senses rather than the mind. There are worse traits and places to be.
Corey, it's a must read, especially for those in your field and for anyone interested in how
information is being manufactured, filtered, distributed, and internalized.
Hint: we don't know whattf others are reading and thinking, and won't be finding out anytime
soon.
I don't think Clinton would have cancelled the Iran agreement because it leaves the US exposed
as the one clearly breaking its word, annoying its allies. I think she would have found cleverer
ways to be bellicose. For instance, her supporter Michael Morell told Charlie Rose we should be
covertly killing Iranians and Russians in Syria so that they would know we did it. He didn't spell
it out, but by saying "covert" he meant we would deny it publicly. Clinton also wanted protected
zones for refugees, which in practice would mean massive air strikes and ground forces and in
a sanctuary for rebels to use as they strike at the Syrians and Russians and Iranians and Hezbollah.
Before someone objects to irrelevant Clinton bashing, there is a larger point. Trump is awful
and I favor removing him via the 25th Amendment because I think he might start a war with N Korea.
But a great many of Trump's opponents are opposed to him because he is an incompetent boob and
not because they oppose American warmongering. They favor it, but don't trust Trump to do it correctly.
@122 I'm going to respectfully leave that for you to figure out on your own. I'll close all further
communication with you by suggesting that your aggressive and uniformly uncharitable reading of
the remarks of others may complicate your understanding of relatively simple statements.
@123 I enjoy your comments very much, generally. And 123 is entirely fair.
I find very little in Trump's first term that is remarkable, or revolutionary. He seems to
understand that he can't go to war with a Republican party he's ostensibly supposed to lead. Corey
and others are correct, I believe, in asserting that Trump is fundamentally uninterested in governing,
and entirely wrapped up in frequent external validations. I'll add that he thrives on conflict
and perhaps instinctively knows how and when to rally his base. I've certainly seen him switch
gears/targets during rallies when he senses he's losing the crowd.
Unlike you, and probably many others, I don't take anything any politician says seriously,
especially Trump. Actions, rather than words, matter far more. Trump might like to get credit
for a decapitation strike on NK and I think you nailed it when you noted that such a strike would
win him bi-partisan support. He's more interested, imho, in getting credit for a golden economic
age however fanciful that notion may be.
Overall, I still defer to Scott Adams and look forward to his new book (any day)
"Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter." By all means buy Corey's Book, but
keep Adams in the back of your mind for light reading.
Trump may well blow us all up, but I've been told that could happen pretty much every day since
I can recall. What I can say, re: Kim, is that I was here in Japan when Bill Clinton started looking
seriously at removing Kim and all the Americans I knew here were crapping themselves. Can't see
it happening simply because nobody wants to see downtown Seoul and Tokyo vaporized, one of which
is a near-certainty, and that's if the conflict remains contained. The 1 percent in China, the
US, Korea, Russia, and Japan aren't about to let anybody risk a regional conflagration.
Michael Morell is a former CI A director and I saw speculation that he was a likely member of
a Clinton Administration. About the same time that he appeared on Charlie Rose he had also published
an op ed endorsing Clinton for President.
But you also ignored my other points. Clinton favored a safe zone in Syria, which is tantamount
to an invasion of Syria and armed conflict with their government and its allies. And Clinton herself
was and is representative of a large number of Very Serious People who thought Obama had botched
Syria by not intervening on a large enough scale. There is a big constituency for more vigorous
action against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. ( There is also a constituency for more intervention
in the Ukraine.). Clinton was clearly part of that. She also told AIPAC that we needed to take
our relationship with Israel to the next level, and the only comment I recall reading about her
regarding Yemen was about Iranian intervention, but to be honest I would need to look that up
to be sure.
Clinton pushed for the Libyan intervention.
Again, she is irrelevant now, but she was part of the group who wanted yet more American military
intervention in the Middle East. That group is still around. Your response was to avoid all my
points and to pretend Morrell is just some random supporter.
Last comment of the day. But I googled and found something I didn't know. Morell was one of her
advisors last fall and said we should be stopping and boarding Iranian ships to prevent them from
sending weapons to the Houthis.
J-D 'Can you explain how the construction of Trump in an (illustrative example) imagined narrative
differs from an objective description of Trump?'
Here is a quote from a Vox article dated Oct 13: ". . . obviously, there's Donald Trump, who
has dispensed with one democratic norm after another. He's fired an FBI director in order to undercut
an investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Moscow . . ."
The article is not about Trump. Sean Illing, the author, is using Trump as an illustration.
Or, rather he is using a narrative about Trump where Trump colluded with the Russian state to
win election by foul means. If you accept the donnée of Trump's collusion with Russia, then it
follows that Trump fired Comey in what practically amounts to obstruction of justice. And, a considerable
volume of reporting has supported that narrative. One set of reports had Comey fired right after
he made a budget request to fund an expanded investigation. A dossier put together by a British
spy implied that Trump was being blackmailed by Russians. A meeting of arranged by one of Trump's
sons with a Russian lawyer was supposedly baited with an offer of dirt on Clinton and this meeting
has been interpreted as confirming the Trump campaign's willingness to collude. There has been
a lot of speculation in the Media in support of this narrative is my point. At the time Comey
was fired, there was a great volume of speculation centered on what Trump said in his letter dismissing
Comey, calling into question the claim by Trump that Comey had assured Trump on three occasions
that Trump himself was not under investigation. In support of the narrative that Trump had obstructed
justice, Comey's character and positive reputation were touted by some journalists.
But, despite the tremendous volume of journalistic speculation structured around this narrative
of collusion, there are no confirmed and unambiguous facts to support it. So, Illing must qualify
his use of the narrative as an example of bad behavior with the insertion of the weasel words,
"possible collusion".
In a better world than the one we are living in, responsible journalists are careful and judicious
in both verifying facts and grounding the narratives they use with facts. The facts that can be
ascertained and verified become constraints on the story, on the choice of narrative. That does
not necessarily happen. Sometimes, journalists go with a "good story" that resonates with readers
and attracts clicks or viewers. And, they construe such facts as there are in ways that support
the chosen narrative without exercising judgment or attempting verification. The story -- the
choice of narrative script -- becomes a constraint on the facts and their interpretation.
I think the balance of available factual evidence suggests pretty strongly that Trump did not
collude with the Russian state to defeat Clinton. An honest and balanced "objective" description
of factors affecting the electoral outcome and Trump's conduct do not support the idea that there
was collusion or even that the Russians did much of anything to affect the election beyond openly
funding a cable news channel. The dossier peddled by the British ex-spy was pretty ridiculous
on its face. The Comey budget request was a pure invention. Responsible journalists would have
attempted to verify details in the dossier or reported on how absurd many parts of it were. Journalists
assessing Comey's character might have taken a more critical perspective.
If the factual basis for "possible collusion" is taken away, the obstruction of justice charge
evaporates. Trump becomes a President who does not want to be dogged by a groundless investigation,
fishing for a blue dress until it finds one. Trump the President finds he does not want to have
the hack, Comey hanging out. Useful when he was tripping up his opponent, not so attractive as
a companion.
Trump viewed plainly is still a fairly alarming figure to have in a powerful office, but a
narrative of traitorous collusion with a national enemy, titillating as it may be as news entertainment,
is not descriptively accurate given the available evidence and appropriately balanced methods
of evaluating that evidence. (During the campaign, Trump called on Russia to disclose the emails
Clinton claimed to have deleted. I suppose one could take that as a joke or a call for collusion
with Boris and Natasha. I think joke is the better, more natural interpretation.)
You did it again, layman. I refuted what you said to me even if you take it in the narrowest possible
way. You objected to my reference to Morell's statement, implying that he was just some random
Clinton supporter using some silly argument about. " Donald Johnson supporter" who drowns kittens.
I showed that this argument was wrong and Morell was one of Clinton's advisors. If you want to
stick to issues, then stick to them and don't make silly arguments and get them wrong.
The larger point is that in Washington the fight between Trump and many ( obviously not all)
of his critics is a fight between two groups of militarists.. It would be good if people acknowledged
this. In a way it is three groups of militarists,, since Trump's personal incoherence makes him
a group unto himself. But on Iran there is an important disagreement between those who want to
dump the nuclear agreement and those who want to adhere to it, but are otherwise hardliners who
badly want more confrontation.
On your main point, when you aren't trivializing mine, yes, Trump is worse than Clinton because
he is not only an arrogant militarist (a trait he shares with Clinton and many others), but ignorant
and irrational.
Layman, small differences between Clinton and Trump do not dominate Clinton's very large political
defects. You had an argument for relentlessly focusing on differences to the exclusion of appreciating
the whole reality, maybe, when there was a choice on an upcoming ballot. Now, we live in the shadow
of Clinton's defects: her defects gave us Trump. And, those defects are not so much the qualities
of an individual person -- Clinton or Trump -- as they are the persistent institutional personalities
of large political factions and institutional actors: the Democratic Party establishment, the
Deep State intelligence agencies and military-industrial complex, the Foreign Policy Blob, the
corporate Media, et cetera.
Bullying others in comments over such fine points as whether Clinton would have respected
certain forms of the Iran nuclear deal is not contributing much to the discussion. We can see
that Trump is hostile to that agreement and is cynically manipulating the forms in ways likely
to make the agreement come apart. What relevance a counterfactual projection of Clinton's behavior
might have is not clear; asserting that acceptance of such a counterfactual as "true" should be
a dispositive criteria for rationality borders on the bizarre.
The relevant fact is not some putative small differences between Trump and Clinton (and the
factions and interests and institutionalized views she sought to represent as a fully paid-up
member of the Foreign Policy Blob), but the near-absence in American politics of a countervailing
force to the consensus of views and interests promoting a palsied, nearly mindless imperial aggression.
Morell's views are relevant to showing just how extreme and reckless is this "center" that Clinton
represented, and understanding how and why the "center" is not doing much to restrain the Trump.
Some powerful forces cultivated by the Democratic establishment have always been hostile to Iran,
supportive of Saudi Arabia and so on.
TM, the idea that CR is minimizing Trump seems bizarre to me. If anyone understands the incoherent
viciousness of conservatism as the impulse to dominate in a hierarchical polity, it is our gracious
host. Trump is expressing conservative ideas and impulses that have always been there. He is not
new. That bit of narrative hyperbole -- that Trump is different from all those nice responsible
conservatives of the past -- is a dangerous deception. What is different in our political moment
is the collapse of effective opposition from the left and centre-left. Trump is so scary because
so little stands in his way, so little compels him (or the various factions enjoying the power
associated with the authority of office under his aegis, including the practical military junta
at the core of his Administration) to moderate his policies, let alone his rhetoric.
what I always find grotesque about the accusations of Russian meddling is the full ticket
obliviousness to all the meddling the US used to perform in Russian elections, and in fact in
many other elections worldwide. It's quite a sorry sight to see people like you make a fuss about
very minor activities (if there's even evidence of any), without as much as a shred of self awareness.
Also, too: I've said I think she's bad on militarism. I'm not interested in, and don't,
defend the other side of that argument. I just don't have any patience for the sort of nonsense
that wants to paint her as an eater of babies. She's a bog-standard, mainstream adherent of
the global diplomatic, economic and military order. That's not good, but it ain't Satan either.
The global diplomatic, economic and military order is downright evil and full-scale babyeating.
Ask around in Yemen, Syria, Lybia, etc. So yes, she has that Satan streak. That that's bog-standard
and mainstream is horrific, but I grant you that's the world we live in.
Note, BTW, that she was directly involved in at least some of these actions. She has, even
now, more blood on her hands than Trump.
Layman, this is the third time your response is frustratingly beside the point and after this
I am giving up, because you are just going to continue doing it. I didn't just quote other people.
I said Clinton supported intervention in Syria, that she supported the Libyan intervention and
of course she voted for the Iraq War. She is also a standard AIPAC panderer. Do your own googling
if you actually care about this rather than try to save face in some internet thread. It's well
known Clinton is a hawk.
My point was that yes, she is a bog standard militarist and one of the points I was making
is that even if she is no longer relevant, the people who are militaristic in their attitudes
still are. You are the one between the two of us who wants to make it mainly about Clinton, but
since you brought up baby eating, that is you once again trivializing the consequences of bog
standard US militarism.
'Police departments will now have access to military surplus equipment typically used in warfare,
including grenade launchers, armored vehicles and bayonets, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced
on Monday, describing it as "lifesaving gear."'
All of the foregoing actions could have been predicted during the campaign.
It is quite true that the U.S. has interfered in the elections of other nations, with disastrous
consequences for many of those nations. Why this should tie hands now is not clear to me. Highly
unlikely the Russians were engaged in righteous retribution for Mossadegh. I suspect some would
be taking a less dismissive tone had, say, the Chinese interfered on behalf of Clinton the bloodthirsty.
Layman@159 :
Based on this and your prior comment, you're asking for counterfactuals, because of course
Clinton-the-non-President is not capable of being even as bad as let alone worse than Trump-the-President.
However, based on your comments elsewhere in the thread, you're dismissing any counterfactuals
out of hand. Taken together, this is not a tack taken by someone who is interested in a serious
dialogue, or really, any dialogue. Can we dispense with that sort of horseshit?
Either Clinton has no relevance at all, in which case you can forgo with the pedantic lectures
about how she's vastly superior in all ways to Trump (
@95 ) and we can hopefully resume forgetting that she exists, or the comparison of a hypothetical
Clinton presidency to the current administration has some value in the conversation even when
someone other than you is making it (
@96 ). Until and unless you're willing and able to unravel the fundamental contradiction between
these perfectly incompatible stances – which have infected every exchange you've made downthread
of the them – there's no point at all in trying to discuss this with you in any detail, and there's
certainly no reason for us to run and fetch answers for you in response to your ever-changing
standards.
I didn't go back to see who first mentioned Clinton, but the point made by at least a few of us
is that Clinton is only important at this point as a representative of a broad segment of the
Beltway crowd that is constantly pushing for more military intervention, either directly or by
proxy, and that some of the opposition to Trump doesn't come from antiwar types, but from people
who don't trust him to warmonger in a competent way.
If people want a sane non- militaristic foreign policy it's going to take more than just opposition
to Trump. You are also going to have to oppose some of Trump's opponents in both parties. The
one time Trump received positive feedback and praise from many in the Beltway was when he bombed
Syria.
If XYZ does not exist, it doesn't exist. If it does exist, it exists. I agree that in our present
state of political disorganization among the broad mass, most people do not know much about constitutes
a political issue. And, they don't know what they want politically.
nastywoman @ 175
"Such "thinking" is as "Alien" as blaming the kid who was mauled by a Pit Bull the other day
– "because so little stood in the Pit Bulls way and so little did "compel him".
"What type of person – what type of people can think like that?!"
The kind of person who thinks dogs should be kept on a leash. The type of person who can think
like that is highly intelligent, suave and debonair.
Why are people still talking about Clinton? In general, because Clinton won't shut up. She's as
hungry for a microphone and the spotlight as the conservative in question. Which is ironic considering
that her aversion to the press and the public as a candidate helped cost her the election. Now,
she can't stop talking. Bannon would willingly bankroll the book tour and undoubtedly wants her
to remain in the spotlight through 2018. Indeed, Bannon is banking on making Hillary a key part
of Trump's re-election in 2020, as role she looks all too eager to fill. Chew on that as you gaze
into the future.
Why are people talking about Hillary here, on a thread about Trump and conservatism? Because
a plausible argument can be made that Hillary is more of conservative than Trump, at least in
terms of neo-conservative politics. She has, after all, two neo-con wars under her belt already
and enjoys good relations with all the really wrong people. Her avarice and willingness to tell
tales are at least comparable to Trump's. But perhaps the best reason Hillary belongs here is
because many believe that had a less conservative Democrat than Hillary run (Bernie, for example),
Dems would have won and Donald Trump would be yesterday's news.
To get a sense of what the Democratic future looks like, here's a very recent interview with
Hillary which I think is illustrative of the level of disconnect between supporters (like me)
who felt strongly enough about her candidacy in 2008 to endure accusations of racism from Obama
supporters, yet turned from her to Trump by 2015, and those who still support her for reasons
that make a great deal of sense (to them).
The interview with Hillary about Hillary runs 45 minutes on Australian TV with a transcript.
Take away – Trump figures bigly and in the most unflattering terms, so much for graciousness in
defeat. The Access Hollywood tape is discussed in great detail, as is Comey, and the Russians.
The words Wall St; Goldman Sachs, Libya, and Syria are never mentioned. In Hillary-world Michigan,
Wisconsin, and Bernie Sanders merit a mention each and only in a very specific context. We get
David Duke, the Klu Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists; pizzas – and pure deflection
when the discussion turns to Bill, Chelsea, gifts; and cash. In short, she hasn't much of a good
word to say about anyone.
Here's a sampling for the still faithful.
" Russians actually paid in rubles for running ads in ah Facebook and on Twitter making all
kinds of accusations against me, working to suppress voters which is a really important part of
the equation " (suppress voters, or decrease turnout? The latter fits better, imho.)
Interviewer: "Is it, is it the case that you missed the fundamentally angry sentiment in the
US last year against globalisation?
HILLARY CLINTON: I didn't miss it "
Interviewer: "Was it in some ways your links to big money politics that made it difficult for
you to be the representative of that anger ?
HILLARY CLINTON: No, not at all! You know, when I was in the primary, Bernie Sanders couldn't
explain his programs. I was the one who was saying here's what we're going to do to the banks
"
One mere mention of Wisconsin: "we know is that the false information was aimed at Wisconsin
and Michigan and parts of Pennsylvania "
Economic nationalism in key ideas is close to Mussolini version of corporatism. It is about
the alliance of state with large corporation but of less favorable to large corporations terms
then under neoliberalism, which is a flavor of corporatism as well, but extremely favorable to
the interests of transactionals.
So grossly simplifying, this is Mussolini version of corporatism (Make Italy Great Again),
minus foreign wars, minus ethnic component (replacing it with more modern "cultural nationalism"
agenda).
Bannon is definitely overrated. It is jobs that matter and he has no real plan. Relying on
tax cutting and deregulation is not a plan. In this sense, yes, he is a paper tiger. And not a
real nationalist, but some kind of castrated variety.
One thing that plays into Bannon hands in the DemoRats (neoliberal Democrats led by
Hillary Clinton) were completely discredited during the last elections.
Notable quotes:
"... But his statements show that it's all bluster and no real strategy. Democrats seem poised to take back Congress precisely because of Republican extremism, not because institutional Republicans are inadequately racist and nationalist. ..."
"... Like Karl Rove before him, Steven Bannon is a paper tiger. ..."
There is a tendency on the left to overestimate the abilities of conservative campaign gurus
and spinmeisters after a bitter defeat. In the aughts, Karl Rove was seen as the Svengali
mastermind of Republican politics, a nefarious force smarter and more cunning than all the
left's braintrust put together. It turned out not to be true. Karl Rove didn't have "the math"
and never really did: Rove mostly got lucky by a combination of butterfly ballots in Florida,
and happening to hold power during a terrorist attack that saw Democrats cowed into submission
rather than holding the president and his team accountable for their failure to protect the
country.
Steve Bannon is taking on a similar mystique for some. But Bannon is no more special than
Rove...
... ... ...
Bannon is
going
to war " with the GOP establishment, even going so far as to countermand Trump's own
endorsement in the Alabama Senate race and force the president to back a loser.
But his statements show that it's all bluster and no real strategy. Democrats seem
poised to take back Congress precisely because of Republican extremism, not because
institutional Republicans are inadequately racist and nationalist.
And his prediction to the Values Voter Summit that Trump will
win 400 electoral votes in 2020 is simply preposterous on its face. It's no better than
even odds that Trump will even finish out his term, much less sweep to a Reaganesque landslide
in three years. During the same speech, Bannon quipped a line destined to be fodder for the
inevitable 2018 campaign commercials accusing Trump of actively blowing up the ACA
exchanges and driving up premiums in a bid to kill the program.
Like Karl Rove before him, Steven Bannon is a paper tiger. Democrats need only
muster courage, conviction and hard work to teach him the same lesson they taught Rove in 2006.
David Atkins is a writer, activist and
research professional living in Santa Barbara. He is a contributor to the Washington Monthly's
Political Animal and president of The Pollux Group, a qualitative research firm.
"... Despite the potential pitfalls of Cotton and Netanyahu's plan, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley embraced the approach. Haley, a possible replacement for embattled Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, tweeted yesterday, "[Sen. Tom Cotton] has clear understanding of the Iranian regime & flaws in the nuclear deal. His [CFR] speech is worth reading." ..."
"... The United States must cease all appeasement, conciliation, and concessions towards Iran, starting with the sham nuclear negotiations. Certain voices call for congressional restraint, urging Congress not to act now lest Iran walk away from the negotiating table, undermining the fabled yet always absent moderates in Iran. But, the end of these negotiations isn't an unintended consequence of Congressional action, it is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak." ..."
"... Any agreement that advances our interests must by necessity compromise Iran's -- doubly so since they are a third-rate power, far from an equal to the United States. The ayatollahs shouldn't be happy with any deal; they should've felt compelled to accept a deal of our choosing lest they face economic devastation and military destruction of their nuclear infrastructure. That Iran welcomes this agreement is both troubling and telling. ..."
"... Ben Armbruster, writing for LobeLog last week, detailed the ways in which Mark Dubowitz , CEO of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies , pushes for a so-called "better deal" while explicitly calling for regime change in Tehran. ..."
"... But perhaps a bigger pressure on Trump to de-certify comes from three of his biggest political donors : Sheldon Adelson , Paul Singer , and Bernard Marcus . All three have funded groups that sought to thwart the negotiations leading to the JCPOA, including Dubowitz's FDD, and have given generously to Trump. ..."
"... Adelson has also financed Israel's largest circulation daily newspaper, whose support for Netanyahu and his right-wing government earned it the nickname "Bibiton." ..."
The Post credits Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sen. Tom Cotton
(R-AR) with this "fix it or nix it" approach to U.S. compliance with the JCPOA. Indeed, Cotton
laid out essentially this very strategy in a speech
at the Council on Foreign Relations in which he proposed that the president should decertify
Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal based on Iran's actions in unrelated areas and toughen
key components of the agreement, arguing that the deal fails to serve U.S. national security
interests.
Despite the potential pitfalls of Cotton and Netanyahu's plan, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
embraced the approach. Haley, a possible replacement for embattled Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, tweeted
yesterday, "[Sen. Tom Cotton] has clear understanding of the Iranian regime & flaws in the
nuclear deal. His [CFR] speech is worth reading."
But Cotton has been clear that renegotiating the nuclear deal isn't his actual intention. In
2015, he made no secret of his desire to blow up diplomacy with Iran, saying
:
The United States must cease all appeasement, conciliation, and concessions towards
Iran, starting with the sham nuclear negotiations. Certain voices call for congressional
restraint, urging Congress not to act now lest Iran walk away from the negotiating table,
undermining the fabled yet always absent moderates in Iran. But, the end of these
negotiations isn't an unintended consequence of Congressional action, it is very much an
intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak."
Later that same year, Cotton explained his terms for any agreement with Iran, qualities that
more closely resemble a surrender document than anything the Iranians would agree to in a
negotiation. Cotton
said :
Any agreement that advances our interests must by necessity compromise Iran's --
doubly so since they are a third-rate power, far from an equal to the United States. The
ayatollahs shouldn't be happy with any deal; they should've felt compelled to accept a deal
of our choosing lest they face economic devastation and military destruction of their nuclear
infrastructure. That Iran welcomes this agreement is both troubling and telling.
Indeed, Cotton and his fellow proponents of the president de-certifying Iranian compliance,
despite all indications that Iran is complying with the JCPOA, have a not-so-thinly-veiled goal
of regime change in Tehran, a position in which the JCPOA and any negotiations with Iran pose a
serious threat. Ben Armbruster, writing for LobeLog last week,
detailed the ways in which Mark Dubowitz , CEO of the
neoconservative Foundation for
Defense of Democracies , pushes for a so-called "better deal" while explicitly calling for
regime change in Tehran.
"I think that Iran is the devil," said Marcus in a 2015 Fox Business interview . Adelson told a Yeshiva University
audience in 2013 that U.S. negotiators should launch a nuclear weapon at Iran as a
negotiating tactic. Adelson may hold radical views about the prudence of a nuclear attack on Iran, but he
appears to enjoy easy access to Trump. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who were Trump's biggest
financial supporters by far during his presidential run, met with the president at Adelson's
headquarters in Las Vegas recently, ostensibly to discuss the recent mass shooting there.
But Andy Abboud, senior vice president Government Relations for Adelson's Sands Corporation,
told the Adelson-owned Las Vegas Review Journal that the meeting was "pre-arranged and set to
discuss policy,"
according to the paper .
Adelson has also financed Israel's largest circulation daily
newspaper, whose support for Netanyahu and his right-wing government earned it the nickname
"Bibiton."
Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and U.S. foreign policy. He's
previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press
Service.
I thought the same way as John in January 2017. We both were definitely wrong. As were
many people who voted for Trump in a hope to block ascendance of neocon warmonger Hillary Clinton
to power. Now it is unclear whether Hillary Clinton would be so disastrous in foreign policy
as Trump or slightly less so.
The period when Trump was at least formally ant-war is firmly in the past now and probably
ended with inauguration. In April Trump folded to neocons and destroyed his
anti-war credentials with
Tomahawk salvo in Syria. Instead of fighting "the Washington swap" as he promised to his voters,
he became a part of the swamp. In August Trump himself emerged as a bona-fide warmonger stoking the
tension with North Korea. And in October he decertified Iran deal.
Notable quotes:
"... The implications of this move are, arguably, breathtaking. Trump treated Putin as his ally, not as a hated adversary. And he treated Obama and the bipartisan foreign policy elite of Washington as his adversaries, not his allies -- a move that makes perfect sense if Trump's desire is to rein in the War Party's New Cold War and to strive for a New Détente with Russia. ..."
"... If the main enemy is those who are stoking the New Cold War and risking worse, then Trump has placed himself squarely against these war hawks. And stop to consider for a moment who these folks are. Besides President Obama and Hillary Clinton, they represent a full-blown armchair army: neocons, liberal interventionists, the mainstream media, various Soros-funded "non-governmental organizations," virtually all the important think tanks, the leadership of both major parties, and the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence agencies. This array of Official Washington's power elite has been working 24/7 at demonizing Putin and stoking tensions with nuclear-armed Russia. Trump took on all of them on with his tweet! ..."
"... As Trump looks for new allies in pursuit of a New Détente and a relaxation of U.S.-Russian tensions, Putin is foremost among them. Thus, in the struggle for peace, Trump has drawn new lines, and they cross national borders. Not since Ronald Reagan embraced Mikhail Gorbachev or Richard Nixon went to China have we seen a development like this. In this new battle to reduce tensions between nuclear powers, Trump has shown considerable courage, taking on a wide range of attackers. ..."
When President Obama expelled Russian diplomats over the hysterical and unproven accusation
of Russia "hacking the election," Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to be drawn into a
petty squabble, saying he would delay any response until Donald Trump assumed office. Instead
Putin invited American diplomats and their families in Moscow to join the official holiday
celebrations in the Kremlin.
Then came the shock that shook Official Washington: President-elect Trump, in the form of a
tweet heard round the world, wrote: "Great move on delay (by V. Putin) -- I always knew he
was very smart!"
And just to be sure that everyone saw it, Trump "pinned" the tweet which means it is the
first thing seen by viewers of his account. This was a first use of "pinning" for Trump. And to
be doubly sure, he posted it on Instagram as well. This was no spontaneous midnight outburst
but a very deliberate action taken on Friday noon, Dec. 30, the day after Obama had issued his
retaliation order.
The implications of this move are, arguably, breathtaking. Trump treated Putin as his
ally, not as a hated adversary. And he treated Obama and the bipartisan foreign policy elite of
Washington as his adversaries, not his allies -- a move that makes perfect sense if
Trump's desire is to rein in the War Party's New Cold War and to strive for a New
Détente with Russia.
If the main enemy is those who are stoking the New Cold War and risking worse, then
Trump has placed himself squarely against these war hawks. And stop to consider for a moment
who these folks are. Besides President Obama and Hillary Clinton, they represent a full-blown
armchair army: neocons, liberal interventionists, the mainstream media, various Soros-funded
"non-governmental organizations," virtually all the important think tanks, the leadership of
both major parties, and the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence agencies. This array of
Official Washington's power elite has been working 24/7 at demonizing Putin and stoking
tensions with nuclear-armed Russia. Trump took on all of them on with his tweet!
Putin as Ally Against the War Party
As Trump looks for new allies in pursuit of a New Détente and a relaxation of
U.S.-Russian tensions, Putin is foremost among them. Thus, in the struggle for peace, Trump has
drawn new lines, and they cross national borders. Not since Ronald Reagan embraced Mikhail
Gorbachev or Richard Nixon went to China have we seen a development like this. In this new
battle to reduce tensions between nuclear powers, Trump has shown considerable courage, taking
on a wide range of attackers.
Later that afternoon, Maya Kosoff writing for Vanity Fair
put out an article
entitled "Twitter Melts Down over 'Treason' After Trump Praises Putin." The first batch of such
tweets came from "journalists and other foreign policy experts," the next from Evan McMullin,
the former CIA officer who tried to draw off Republican votes from Trump in the general
election, who tweeted: "To be clear, @realDonaldTrump is siding with America's greatest
adversary even as it attacks our democracy. Never grow desensitized to this."
Finally came the predictable rash of tweets calling Trump's words "treasonous" or
"seditious." In response, Team Trump refused to issue a "clarification," saying instead that
Trump's words spoke for themselves.
As stunning as Trump's tweet was in many ways, it was in other ways entirely predictable.
Despite the mainstream media's scorn and Hillary Clinton's mocking him as Putin's "puppet,"
Trump has held firm to his promise that he will seek peace with Russia and look for areas of
cooperation such as fighting terrorism.
So, even when Trump's Russia comments appeared to cost him politically, he stuck with them,
suggesting that he believes that this détente is important. The rule of thumb is that if
a politician says something that will win votes, you do not know whether it is conviction or
opportunism. But if a politician says something that should lose her or him votes, then you can
bet it is heartfelt.
Trump was bashed over his resistance to the New Cold War both during the Republican
primaries when many GOP leaders were extremely hawkish on Russia and during the general
election when the Clinton campaign sought to paint him as some sort of Manchurian Candidate.
Even his vice presidential candidate Mike Pence staked out a more hawkish position than
Trump.
Trump stood by his more dovish attitude though it presented few electoral advantages and
many negatives. By that test, he appears to be sincere. So, his latest opening to Putin was
entirely predictable.
A Choice of Peace or War
What is troubling, however, is that some Americans who favor peace hate Trump so much that
they recoil from speaking out in his defense over his "treasonous" tweet though they may
privately agree with it. Some progressives are uncomfortable with the mainstream's descent into
crude McCarthyism but don't want to say anything favorable about Trump.
After all, a vote for President is either thumbs up or thumbs down -- nothing in
between -- though voters may like or dislike some policy prescriptions of one candidate
and other positions of another candidate. And progressives could list many reasons to not vote
for Trump.
But a presidential administration is multi-issued -- not all or none. One can disagree
with a president on some issues and agree on others. For instance, many progressives are
outraged over Trump's harsh immigration policies but agree with him on scrapping the TPP trade
deal.
In other words, there is no reason why those who claim to be for peace should not back Trump
on his more peaceful approach toward Putin and Russia, even if they disdain his tough talk
about fighting terrorism. That is the reality of politics.
What I've discovered is that many progressives -- as well as many on the Right --
who oppose endless war and disdain empire will tell you in whispers that they do support
Trump's attempt at Détente 2.0, though they doubt he will succeed. In the meantime, they
are keeping their heads down and staying quiet.
But clearly Trump's success depends on how much support he gets -- as weighed against
how much grief he gets. By lacking the courage to defend Trump's "treasonous tweet," those who
want to rein in the warmongers may be missing a rare opportunity. If those who agree with Trump
on this issue stay silent, it may be a lost opportunity as well.
John V. Walsh, an anti-war activist, can be reached at [email protected]
Bastard neoliberalism by Trump (and Bannon) are inconsistent. You can't be half pregnant -- to be
a neoliberal (promote deregulation, regressive taxes) and be anti-immigration and anti-globalist. In
this sense words Trump is doomed: neoliberal are determined to get rid of him.
Reagan was a former governor of California before becoming the President. hardly a complete outsider.
Trump was an outsider more similar to Barak Obama in a sense that he has no political record and can
ride on backlash against neoliberal globalization, especially outsourcing and offshoring and unlimited
immigration, as well as ride anti-globalism sentiments and popular protest against foreign wars. Only
quickly betraying those promised afterward. Much like king of "bait and switch" Obama .
Notable quotes:
"... Among the signature issues of Trumpian populism is economic nationalism, a new trade policy designed to prosper Americans first. ..."
"... Reagan preached free trade, but when Harley-Davidson was in danger of going under because of Japanese dumping of big bikes, he slammed a 50 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles. Though a free trader by philosophy, Reagan was at heart an economic patriot. ..."
"... He accepted an amnesty written by Congress for 3 million people in the country illegally, but Reagan also warned prophetically that a country that can't control its borders isn't really a country any more. ..."
"... Reagan and Trump both embraced the Eisenhower doctrine of "peace through strength." And, like Ike, both built up the military. ..."
"... Both also believed in cutting tax rates to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget through rising revenues rather than cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security. ..."
"... Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in Reagan's day, Russia and China in Trump's time. ..."
"... As Ingraham writes, Trump_vs_deep_state is rooted as much in the populist-nationalist campaigns of the 1990s, and post-Cold War issues as economic patriotism, border security, immigration control and "America First," as it is in the Reaganite issues of the 1980s. ..."
"... Coming up on one year since his election, Trump is besieged by a hostile press and united Democratic Party. This city hates him. While his executive actions are impressive, his legislative accomplishments are not. His approval ratings have lingered in the mid-30s. He has lost half a dozen senior members of his original White House staff, clashed openly with his own Cabinet and is at war with GOP leaders on the Hill. ..."
"... And both are fans of the tinkle-down theory of economics, where the govt cuts taxes on the rich and increases them on the poor and middle class, since the rich will do a better job of spreading around the extra money they get to keep, thereby stoking the economy, supposedly. Or as 'Poppy' Bush called it, "voodoo economics." ..."
"... It's a failed regressive tax program that only creates more billionaires while the number of poor swells, due to an influx of the steadily declining middle-class. ..."
"... Bizarrely, comically ignorant of reality. Though the really bizarre thing is the degree to which the same obtusely ignorant world-view permeates the establishment media and the political establishment. ..."
"... There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in the grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism. Reagan's opposition to the Soviet Union was very much bound up in resistance to that ideology, even if that resistance was often as much a pretext as a real motive. ..."
"... Today neither Russia nor China subscribes to any such universalist ideology. It is the US, today, that seeks to impose its liberal democratic political correctness ideologies and its manufactured taboos upon the world and which harasses and menaces any country that tries to live differently. ..."
"... As for Trump supposedly being wrapped up in "America First", that's particularly comical this week as he demonstrates that his idea of "America First" is acting as Israel's bitch, and as he makes ever louder noises about undermining the Iran deal – a policy as clearly counterproductive to any interest plausibly attributable to the American nation (as opposed to the identity lobbies that run the US government politics and media) as it is self-evidently in the self-perceived interests of the Israel Lobby and the foreign country that lobby serves. ..."
"... Trump is an egotistical jackass, nothing else. A liar from the git-go, and a completely ineffective leader, ideologue and President. He's not going to last much longer. I will take note that he did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety. But, he has molted into a complete fuckup. ..."
"... Goodbye, good riddance. Let's get ready to deal with the next wacko -- Pence. ..."
"... you're forgetting that Trump wasn't a war monger while on the campaign trail, far from it. Which is the only reason he won the election. In other words he fooled just enough people (like you and me) long enough to get elected. Same thing happened with peace candidate, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Hussein Obama. It's clearly a rigged process. ..."
Both men were outsiders, and neither a career politician. Raised Democratic, Reagan had been a
Hollywood actor, union leader and voice of GE, before running for governor of California.
Trump is out of Queens, a builder-businessman in a Democratic city whose Republican credentials
were suspect at best when he rode down that elevator at Trump Tower. Both took on the Republican
establishment of their day, and humiliated it.
Among the signature issues of Trumpian populism is economic nationalism, a new trade policy
designed to prosper Americans first.
Reagan preached free trade, but when Harley-Davidson was in danger of going under because
of Japanese dumping of big bikes, he slammed a 50 percent tariff on Japanese motorcycles. Though
a free trader by philosophy, Reagan was at heart an economic patriot.
He accepted an amnesty written by Congress for 3 million people in the country illegally,
but Reagan also warned prophetically that a country that can't control its borders isn't really a
country any more.
Reagan and Trump both embraced the Eisenhower doctrine of "peace through strength." And, like
Ike, both built up the military.
Both also believed in cutting tax rates to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget
through rising revenues rather than cutting programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in Reagan's
day, Russia and China in Trump's time.
And both were regarded in this capital city with a cosmopolitan condescension bordering on contempt.
"An amiable dunce" said a Great Society Democrat of Reagan.
The awesome victories Reagan rolled up, a 44-state landslide in 1980 and a 49-state landslide
in 1984, induced some second thoughts among Beltway elites about whether they truly spoke for America.
Trump's sweep of the primaries and startling triumph in the Electoral College caused the same consternation.
However, as the Great Depression, New Deal and World War II represented a continental divide in
history between what came before and what came after, so, too, did the end of the Cold War and the
Reagan era.
As Ingraham writes, Trump_vs_deep_state is rooted as much in the populist-nationalist campaigns of the
1990s, and post-Cold War issues as economic patriotism, border security, immigration control and
"America First," as it is in the Reaganite issues of the 1980s.
Which bring us to the present, with our billionaire president, indeed, at the barricades.
The differences between Trump in his first year and Reagan in 1981 are stark. Reagan had won a
landslide. The attempt on his life in April and the grace with which he conducted himself had earned
him a place in the hearts of his countrymen. He not only showed spine in giving the air traffic controllers
48 hours to get back to work, and then discharging them when they defied him, he enacted the largest
tax cut in U.S. history with the aid of boll weevil Democrats in the House.
Coming up on one year since his election, Trump is besieged by a hostile press and united
Democratic Party. This city hates him. While his executive actions are impressive, his legislative
accomplishments are not. His approval ratings have lingered in the mid-30s. He has lost half a dozen
senior members of his original White House staff, clashed openly with his own Cabinet and is at war
with GOP leaders on the Hill.
And both are fans of the tinkle-down theory of economics, where the govt cuts taxes
on the rich and increases them on the poor and middle class, since the rich will do a better job
of spreading around the extra money they get to keep, thereby stoking the economy, supposedly.
Or as 'Poppy' Bush called it, "voodoo economics."
It's a failed regressive tax program that only creates more billionaires while the number
of poor swells, due to an influx of the steadily declining middle-class.
The only parts of the economy it helps are the builders of luxury mansions, antique and pricey
art dealers, and the makers of luxury autos and private jets.
when the US Government is trying to prevent alien forces from interfering in our electoral
process
Bizarrely, comically ignorant of reality. Though the really bizarre thing is the degree
to which the same obtusely ignorant world-view permeates the establishment media and the political
establishment.
Two pieces here at Unz you ought to read, and fully take on board the implications of, if you
want to even begin the process of grasping reality, rather than living in the manufactured fantasy
you appear to inhabit at the moment:
Both believed in engaging with the superpower rival of the day -- the Soviet Union in
Reagan's day, Russia and China in Trump's time.
There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear
ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in the
grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism. Reagan's opposition to
the Soviet Union was very much bound up in resistance to that ideology, even if that resistance
was often as much a pretext as a real motive.
Today neither Russia nor China subscribes to any such universalist ideology. It is the
US, today, that seeks to impose its liberal democratic political correctness ideologies and its
manufactured taboos upon the world and which harasses and menaces any country that tries to live
differently.
As for Trump supposedly being wrapped up in "America First", that's particularly comical
this week as he demonstrates that his idea of "America First" is acting as Israel's bitch, and
as he makes ever louder noises about undermining the Iran deal – a policy as clearly counterproductive
to any interest plausibly attributable to the American nation (as opposed to the identity lobbies
that run the US government politics and media) as it is self-evidently in the self-perceived interests
of the Israel Lobby and the foreign country that lobby serves.
Here's the German government being unusually blunt yesterday about the stupidity of the Trump
regime's seeming plans in this regard:
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Thursday said that any move by US President Donald
Trump's administration to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal would drive a wedge between Europe
and the US.
"It's imperative that Europe sticks together on this issue," Gabriel told Germany's RND
newspaper group. "We also have to tell the Americans that their behavior on the Iran issue
will drive us Europeans into a common position with Russia and China against the USA."
It's difficult to know whether the likes of Gabriel actually believe all the boilerplate nonsense
they talk about a supposed Iranian nuclear program – the real reason the European nations want
the deal to continue is that it stopped them having to pretend to believe all the outright lies
the US told about Iran, and having to kowtow t0 costly and counterproductive sanctions against
Iran that did immense general harm for the benefit only of Israel and Saudi Arabia and their US
stooges.
The US pulling out of the deal would at least bring that issue of US dishonesty on Iran and
past European appeasement of it to a head, I suppose.
Trump is an egotistical jackass, nothing else. A liar from the git-go, and a completely ineffective
leader, ideologue and President. He's not going to last much longer. I will take note that he
did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety. But, he has molted into a complete
fuckup.
Goodbye, good riddance. Let's get ready to deal with the next wacko -- Pence.
Assuming they won't kill Pence with the same bomb.
I will take note that he did, temporarily, save us from the madness of the Hillary moiety.
Often I feel like it'd be better if Hillary did the same insane policies. It's always worse
when our guy does something wrong, and better when the hated enemy does it.
Hillary was a danger that she would start WW3 in Syria, but I don't think we can be certain
she'd have started it. Given how risk-averse women are in general, I think the only issue was
whether the Russians could've made it clear that shooting at Russian soldiers would mean war with
Russia. And I think even Hillary's advisers would've blinked.
On the other hand, I don't think Hillary would be nearly as insane on North Korea or Iran.
As a bonus, she would be accelerating the demise of the US, by introducing ever more insane domestic
policies, things like gay, transsexual and female quotas in US Special Forces. This would ultimately
be a good thing, destroying or weakening US power which is currently only used to evil ends in
the world.
Unfortunately I can see Orbán and the Poles torpedoing a common EU stance. I'm sure that will
be the price for Netanyahu's meeting with the V4 leaders a few months ago.
I think one good thing would be if US conservatives stopped their Reagan worship. He was certainly
not a bad person, but he allowed the amnesty to happen, couldn't stop the sanctions on Apartheid
South Africa, didn't (or couldn't?) do anything against the MLK cult becoming a state religion,
and started the free trade and tax cuts cults, he's also responsible for promoting the neocons
to positions of power. So overall he was a mixed bag from a nationalist conservative viewpoint.
Private citizens are forbidden to ask for help from a foreign country, when the US Government
is trying to prevent alien forces from interfering in our electoral process.
You forgot the Clintons, Bush, McCain, Romney, and Obama. China and Israel worked on behalf
of all five of them, even though three of them lost
Yes, that's quite possible, but a common EU stance is not really all that important. What really
matters is how far the Germans, and to a lesser extent the less relevant but still big European
nations such as France and Italy and the more subservient US tool, the UK, are prepared to continue
to kowtow to US and Israeli dishonesty on Iran.
All the signs seem to be that repudiating the deal and trying to return to the days of the
aggressive and counter-productive US-imposed sanctions will be a step too far for many of those
players.
As a bonus, she would be accelerating the demise of the US, by introducing ever more insane
domestic policies, things like gay, transsexual and female quotas in US Special Forces. This
would ultimately be a good thing, destroying or weakening US power which is currently only
used to evil ends in the world.
Actually I suspect that repudiating the JCPOA, whether openly or by de facto breach, will go
immensely farther, and much faster, towards destroying practical US influence and therefore power
globally than any of those domestic policies, at least in the short run.
You can see that Trump is at least dimly aware of that likelihood from the way he keeps bottling
and postponing the decision, despite his clearly evident and desperate desire to please his pro-Israeli
and anti-Iranian advisers and instincts.
On the other hand, I don't think Hillary would be nearly as insane on North Korea or Iran.
An election of Hillary meant open borders. That is official, rapid and deliberate national
suicide. All foreign policy issues pale before such a horror.
1) There's a chance foreign policy insanity starts a nuclear war, in which case all domestic
policy issues will pale before such horror.
2) The US already has de facto open borders. Why does it matter if it becomes majority nonwhite
in 30 or just 20 years?
3) For non-American whites, it's better the earlier the US sphere disintegrates. I bet you
it's better for American whites as well. As long as this political/cultural center holds, the
rot cannot be stopped.
I watched the movie Independence Day last night: Can we have that guy for President after
Trump, or do we have to have an obligatory Democrat (Chelsea Clinton?) President for the next
8 years?
An election of Hillary meant open borders. That is official, rapid and deliberate national
suicide. All foreign policy issues pale before such a horror.
That's understandable, but obviously the calculation must be somewhat different from a non-US
perspective. Given how strongly many white Americans are in favor of pro-war policies and mindless
Israel worship (how many US blacks or Hispanics care about Israel or confronting Iran?), I'm not
even sure nationalists in Europe should really lament the Hispanicization of the US. It might
at least have a positive effect in restricting US interventionism and eroding US power. The sooner
the US is unable to continue with its self-appointed role as a global redeemer nation, the better.
History repeats first as tragedy (crushing the spoiled unionized mostly white air traffic controllers),
then as farce (crushing the spoiled unionized mostly afro NFL jocks). Reagan was at least an American
Firster. Trumpenstein is an obvious traitorous Izzie Firster, with little concern for the so-called
deplorables except to convert them into deployables at the service of his jooie sponsors. Maybe
Paddy should have titled his screed "Heir to Begin, not Reagan"?
Pat Buchanan points out that " it is far more likely that a major war would do for the Trump presidency
and his place in history what it did for Presidents Wilson, Truman, LBJ and George W. Bush."
As for President Trump; Let us hope that war DOES NOT BECOME "The Last Refuge Of This Scoundrel"!
Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority non-White
jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).
If only non-White votes were counted, Hillary Clinton would have been elected unanimously by
the electoral college, and Hillary is more of a war-monger than Trump is.
The few reliable voices for foreign policy sanity in congress, such as Senator Rand Paul and
Congressmen Walter Jones, John Duncan, Thomas Massie, and Justin Amash, represent overwhelmingly
White, Protestant, old-stock American districts.
Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority
non-White jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).
Maybe, but is there any data indicating many blacks in Washington DC actually voted in the
Republican primaries? Why would they when most of them are a solid Democrat voting block? I'd
guess Rubio got his votes from white elites in DC.
As for Puerto Rico, I didn't know they actually have primaries, seems odd given they don't vote
in US presidential elections.
Hillary is more of a war-monger than Trump is.
Hillary was horrible all around, and I agree she might well have been disastrous as president
given her dangerous proposals for no-fly zones in Syria, and the potential of conflict with Russia
this entailed. But I'm no longer sure Trump is really better regarding foreign policy. His behaviour
on the North Korea issue is irresponsible imo, and his willingness to wreck the nuclear deal with
Iran at the behest of neoconservatives and Zionist donors like Sheldon Adelson is a big fat minus
in my view. Sorry, but I think you guys who hoped for something different have all been (neo-)conned.
Reagan said: My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation
that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.
Trump said: We will totally destroy North Korea if the United States is forced to defend
itself or its allies.
The only similarities I see between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump is that both live (lived) in
a sort of la-la land, totally out of touch with reality. The only difference between them is that
Reagan had sensible people around him (like Pat Buchannan) who wrote good speeches and make good
decisions which he took full credit for. Trump, on the other hand delivers abbreviated, one-sentence
speeches via Twitter while surrounded by mental midgets with military minds.
There is arguably a fundamental difference here, that in Reagan's day there was a clear
ideological threat from the Soviet Union, which was still (albeit increasingly nominally) in
the grip of an aggressively destabilising universalist ideology, communism
Not really Randal. The Cold War was an invented war like the War on Terror that replaced just
in the nick of time, and for the same purpose, which is to justify unlimited defense budgets necessary
to sustain a bloated MIC that would not otherwise exist.
Rubio was far more of a war-monger than Trump, and he won the primaries in the majority
non-White jurisdictions (Washington DC, Puerto Rico).
but you're forgetting that Trump wasn't a war monger while on the campaign trail, far from
it. Which is the only reason he won the election. In other words he fooled just enough people
(like you and me) long enough to get elected. Same thing happened with peace candidate, and Nobel
Peace Prize winner, Hussein Obama. It's clearly a rigged process.
Not really Randal. The Cold War was an invented war like the War on Terror that replaced
just in the nick of time, and for the same purpose, which is to justify unlimited defense budgets
necessary to sustain a bloated MIC that would not otherwise exist.
Well, yes and no. In both cases. It really is more complicated than that.
Reagan didn't undo Arab Israel Camp David Peace Treaty He didn't keep the Israeli side and undo
the Egyptian side of the American obligation . He kept both.
Trump is dangerous malevolent anti-American and anti- anything that hurts his ego or pocket
. He has malcontent displaced sycophants as inner circle supporters who want a piece in the pie
denied to them by the establishment .
Here is a quote from antiwar -"In other words, it's all about the war that Trump and his still-loyal
lieutenant Steve Bannon, assisted by UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have declared on the "deep state."
Also, Trump and Bannon aren't really interested in draining the foreign policy swamp in DC.
They simply want to install their own cronies who will ensure that war and globalization benefit
them rather than Kissinger and his ilk. It's a shell game designed to fool Trump's base, but the
rest of the world has kept its eye on the ball."
http://original.antiwar.com/feffer/2017/10/13/trump-signaling-unprecedented-right-turn-foreign-policy/
This war between elites have been predicted by a CT professor in an article in 2016 , to get
more serious and dangerous by 2020 . The fights among elites are not new but another pathway an
empire takes additionally to the final fate of the destruction from within
"A large class of disgruntled elite-wannabes, often well-educated and highly capable,
has been denied access to elite positions."
Another visible sign of increasing intra-elite competition and political polarization is the
fragmentation of political parties
cliodynamic research on past societies demonstrates that elite overproduction is by far the
most important of the three main historical drivers of social instability and political violence
(see Secular Cycles for this analysis).
But the other two factors in the model, popular immiseration (the stagnation and decline of
living standards) and declining fiscal health of the state (resulting from falling state revenues
and rising expenses) are also important contributors.
Ideally Europe would be strong together, without US and more sane policies on morals and immigration.
Yes v4 is connected to CC, Neocon, Zios.
While Polands stance on immigration, and trying to hold on to old values is good, problem is
depending on US too much, and being stuck between Russia and Germany which would isolate it from
Europe in some ways. Obviously Poles are not uniform, views on US, Russia, Germany, Ukraine are
all over the place. I wish Poland was just European (in politics) but the US-EU connection is
still strong.
Commenting on US presidents. Presidents are puppets. All of them. Modern leaders in Western world
are unlikable. Reagan at least had some balance, had some Catholic and Paleocon involvement. It
wasnt all Neocons and Zios. Im quite sure Reagan (and his dad), people like Buchanan had connections
to groups like Knights Malta or Knights Colombus. Cant prove it though. Kennedy was KC.
Today
Neocon/Zionist influence is even stronger. Trump policies on NK and Iran are nuts. At best a war
is avoided.
On the other side you have Clintons, Obamas. They would destroy the US, and have similar policies
because again they are puppets. Clinton would likely be involved in Syria, just like Obama was.
While Polands stance on immigration, and trying to hold on to old values is good, problem
is depending on US too much
Yes, that's a problem, and I think Polish national conservatives are somewhat in denial about
what the modern US stands for the "values" pushed by the US establishment today are incompatible
with the Polish right's vision for Poland (e.g. conservative values in sexual morality – no homo-lobbyism
and transgender nonsense -, strong public role of Catholicism, restrictive and selective immigration
policies that keep out Muslims).
I can understand to some degree why the Polish right is so pro-US, given history and apprehensions
about Germany and Russia, but they should at least be aware that alliance with the US could have
a rather pernicious influence on Poland itself.
"... In the 1970s a programming shop was legacy American, with only a thin scattering of foreigners like myself. Twenty years later programming had been considerably foreignized , thanks to the H-1B visa program. Now, twenty years further on, I believe legacy-American programmers are an endangered species. ..."
"... So a well-paid and mentally rewarding corner of the middle-class job market has been handed over to foreigners -- for the sole reason, of course, that they are cheaper than Americans. The desire for cheap labor explains 95 percent of U.S. immigration policy. The other five percent is sentimentality. ..."
"... Now they are brazen in their crime: you have heard, I'm sure, those stories about American workers being laid off, with severance packages conditional on their helping train their cheaper foreign replacements. That's our legal ..."
"... A "merit-based" points system won't fix that. It will quickly and easily be gamed by employers to lay waste yet more middle-class occupational zones for Americans. If it was restricted to the higher levels of "merit," we would just be importing a professional overclass of foreigners, most East and South Asians, to direct the labors of less-meritorious legacy Americans. How would that ..."
"... Measured by the number of workers per year, the largest guestworker program in the entire immigration system is now student visas through the Optional Practical Training program (OPT). Last year over 154,000 aliens were approved to work on student visas. By comparison, 114,000 aliens entered the workforce on H-1B guestworker visas. ..."
"... A History of the 'Optional Practical Training' Guestworker Program , ..."
"... incredible amount ..."
"... on all sorts of subjects ..."
"... for all kinds of outlets. (This ..."
"... no longer includes ..."
"... National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and ..."
"... and several other ..."
"... . He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: ..."
"... ( also available in Kindle ) and ..."
"... Has it ever occurred to anyone other than me that the cost associated with foreign workers using our schools and hospitals and pubic services for free, is more than off-set by the cheap price being paid for grocery store items like boneless chicken breast, grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce etc, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive even for the wealthy? ..."
Item-wise, the biggest heading there is the second one, "Interior Enforcement." That's very
welcome.
Of course we need improved border security so that people don't enter our country without
permission. That comes under the first heading. An equally pressing problem, though, is the
millions of foreigners who are living and working here, and using our schools and hospitals and
public services, who should not be here.
The President's proposals on interior enforcement cover all bases: Sanctuary
cities , visa
overstays , law-enforcement
resources , compulsory E-Verify , more
deportations , improved visa security.
This is a major, wonderful improvement in national policy, when you consider that less than
a year ago the
White House and
Justice Department were run by committed open-borders
fanatics. I thank the President and his staff for having put so much work into such a
detailed proposal for restoring American sovereignty and the rights of American workers and
taxpayers.
That said, here come the quibbles.
That third heading, "Merit-Based Immigration System," with just four items, needs work.
Setting aside improvements on visa controls under the other headings, this is really the only
part of the proposal that covers legal immigration. In my opinion, it does so imperfectly.
There's some good meat in there, mind. Three of the four items -- numbers one, three, and
four -- got a fist-pump from me:
cutting down chain
migration by limiting it to spouse and dependent children; eliminating the Diversity
Visa Lottery ; and limiting the number of refugees admitted, assuming this means severely
cutting back on the numbers, preferably all the way to
zero.
Good stuff. Item two, however, is a problem. Quote:
Establish a new, points-based system for the awarding of Green Cards (lawful permanent
residents) based on factors that allow individuals to successfully assimilate and support
themselves financially.
sounds OK, bringing in talented, well-educated, well-socialized people, rather than
what the late Lee
Kuan Yew referred to as " fruit-pickers ." Forgive
me if I have a rather jaundiced view of this merit-based approach.
For most of my adult life I made a living as a computer programmer. I spent four years
doing this in the U.S.A. through the mid-1970s. Then I came back in the late 1980s and
worked at the same trade here through the 1990s. (Pictured right–my actual H-1B visa ) That gave me two
clear snapshots twenty years apart, of this particular corner of skilled middle-class
employment in America.
In the 1970s a programming shop was legacy American, with only a thin scattering of
foreigners like myself. Twenty years later programming had been considerably foreignized ,
thanks to the H-1B visa program. Now, twenty years further on, I believe legacy-American
programmers are an endangered species.
So a well-paid and mentally rewarding corner of the middle-class job market has been
handed over to foreigners -- for the sole reason, of course, that they are cheaper than
Americans. The desire for cheap labor explains 95 percent of U.S. immigration policy. The other
five percent is sentimentality.
On so-called "merit-based immigration," therefore, you can count me a cynic. I have no doubt
that American firms could recruit all the computer programmers they need from among our legacy
population. They used to do so, forty years ago. Then they discovered how to game the
immigration system for cheaper labor.
A "merit-based" points system won't fix that. It will quickly and easily be gamed by
employers to lay waste yet more middle-class occupational zones for Americans. If it was
restricted to the higher levels of "merit," we would just be importing a professional overclass
of foreigners, most East and South Asians, to direct the labors of less-meritorious legacy
Americans. How would that contribute to social harmony?
With coming up to a third of a
billion people, the U.S.A. has all the talent, all the merit , it needs. You might
make a case for a handful of certified geniuses like Einstein or worthy dissidents like
Solzhenitsyn, but those cases aside, there is no reason at all to have guest-worker programs.
They should all be shut down.
Some of these cheap-labor rackets don't even need congressional action to shut them down; it
can be done by regulatory change via executive order. The scandalous OPT-visa scam, for
example, which brings in cheap workers under the guise of student visas.
Here is John Miano writing about the OPT program last month, quote:
Measured by the number of workers per year, the largest guestworker program in the
entire immigration system is now student visas through the Optional Practical Training
program (OPT). Last year over 154,000 aliens were approved to work on student visas. By
comparison, 114,000 aliens entered the workforce on H-1B guestworker visas.
Because there is no reporting on how long guestworkers stay in the country, we do not know
the total number of workers in each category. Nonetheless, the number of approvals for work
on student visas has grown by 62 percent over the past four years so their numbers will soon
dwarf those on H-1B visas.
End quote. (And a cheery wave of acknowledgement to John Miano here from one of the
other seventeen people in the U.S.A. that knows the correct placement of the hyphen in
"H-1B.")
Our legal immigration system is addled with these scams. Don't even get me started
on
the EB-5 investor's visa . It all needs sweeping away.
So for preference I would rewrite that third heading to include, yes, items one, three, and
four -- cutting down chain migration, ending the Diversity Visa Lottery, and ending refugee
settlement for anyone of less stature than Solzhenitsyn; but then, I'd replace item two with
the following:
End all guest-worker programs, with exceptions only for the highest levels of
talent and accomplishment, limit one hundred visas per annum .
So much for my amendments to the President's October 8th proposals. There is, though, one
glaring omission from that 70-item list. The proposal has no mention at all of birthright
citizenship.
Yes, yes, I know: some constitutional authorities argue that birthright citizenship is
implied in the
Fourteenth Amendment , although it is certain that the framers of that Amendment did not
have foreign tourists or illegal entrants in mind. Other scholars think Congress could
legislate against it.
The only way to find out is to have Congress legislate. If the courts strike down the
legislation as unconstitutional, let's then frame a constitutional amendment and put it to the
people.
Getting rid of birthright citizenship might end up a long and difficult process. We might
ultimately fail. The only way to find out is to get the process started . Failure to
mention this in the President's proposal is a very glaring omission.
I agree with ending birthright citizenship. But Trump should wait until he can put at
least one more strict constitutionalist in the supreme court. There will be a court
challenge, and we need judges who can understand that if the 14th Amendment didn't give
automatic citizenship to American Indians it doesn't give automatic citizenship to children
of Mexican citizens who jumped our border.
John's article, it seems to me, ignores the elephant in the room: the DACA colonists.
Trump is offering this proposal, more or less, in return for some sort of semi-permanent
regularization of their status. Bad trade, in my opinion. Ending DACA and sending those
illegals back where they belong will have more real effect on illegal and legal
immigration/colonization than all sorts of proposals to be implemented in the future, which
can and will be changed by subsequent Administrations and Congresses.
Trump would also be able to drive a much harder bargain with Congress (like maybe a
moratorium on any immigration) if he had kept his campaign promise, ended DACA the afternoon
of January 20, 2017, and busloads of DACA colonists were being sent south of the Rio
Grande.
The best hope for immigration patriots is that the Democrats are so wedded to Open Borders
that the entire proposal dies and Trump, in disgust, reenacts Ike's Operation Wetback.
Well, in the real world, things just don't work that way. It's pay me now or pay me
later. Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans
refuse to do are run out the country, then what?
Right, prior to 1965, Americans didn't exist. They had all starved to death because, as
everyone knows, no Americans will work to produce food and, even if they did, once Tyson
chicken plants stop making 50 percent on capital they just shut down.
If there were no Somalis in Minnesota, even Warren Buffett couldn't afford grapes.
Illegal immigrants picking American produce is a false economy.
Illegal immigrants are subsidized by the taxpayer in terms of public health, education,
housing, and welfare.
If businesses didn't have access to cheap and subsidized illegal alien labor, they would
be compelled to resort to more farm automation to reduce cost.
Cheap illegal alien labor delays the inevitable use of newer farm automation
technologies.
Many Americans would likely prefer a machine touch their food rather than a illegal alien
with strange hygiene practices.
In addition, anti-American Democrats and neocons prefer certain kinds of illegal aliens
because they bolster their diversity scheme.
@Realist "Once all the undocumented workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs
Americans refuse to do are run out the country, then what?"
Eliminate welfare...then you'll have plenty of workers. Unfortunately, that train left the
station long ago. With or without welfare, there's simply no way soft, spoiled, lazy,
over-indulged Americans who have never hit a lick at anything their life, will ever perform
manual labor for anyone, including themselves.
@Randal Probably people other than you have worked out that once their wages are not
being continually undercut by cheap and easy immigrant competition, the American working
classes will actually be able to earn enough to pay the increased prices for grocery store
items, especially as the Americans who, along with machines, will replace those immigrants
doing the "jobs Americans won't do" will also be earning more and actually paying taxes on
it.
The "jobs Americans/Brits/etc won't do" myth is a deliberate distortion of reality that
ignores the laws of supply and demand. There are no jobs Americans etc won't do, only jobs
for which the employers are not prepared to pay wages high enough to make them worthwhile for
Americans etc to do.
Now of course it is more complicated than that. There are jobs that would not be
economically viable if the required wages were to be paid, and there are marginal
contributions to job creation by immigrant populations, but those aspects are in reality far
less significant than the bosses seeking cheap labour want people to think they are.
As a broad summary, a situation in which labour is tight, jobs are easy to come by and
staff hard to hold on to is infinitely better for the ordinary working people of any nation
than one in which there is a huge pool of excess labour, and therefore wages are low and
employees disposable.
You'd think anyone purporting to be on the "left", in the sense of supporting working
class people would understand that basic reality, but far too many on the left have been
indoctrinated in radical leftist anti-racist and internationalist dogmas that make them
functional stooges for big business and its mass immigration program.
Probably people other than you have worked out that once their wages are not being
continually undercut by cheap and easy immigrant competition, the American working classes
will actually be able to earn enough to pay the increased prices for grocery store items,
especially as the Americans who, along with machines, will replace those immigrants doing
the "jobs Americans won't do" will also be earning more and actually paying taxes on
it.
There might be some truth in this. When I was a student in England in the 60′s I
spent every summer working on farms, picking hops, apples, pears, potatoes and made some
money and had a lot of fun too and became an expert farm tractor operator.
No reason why US students and high school seniors should not pick up a lot of the slack.
Young people like camping in the countryside and sleeping rough, plus lots of
opportunity to meet others, have sex, smoke weed, drink beer, or whatever. If you get a free
vacation plus a nice check at the end, that makes the relatively low wages worthwhile. It is
not always a question of how much you are paid, but how much you can save.
We can fix the EB-5 visa scam. My suggestion: charge would-be "investors" $1 million to
enter the US. This $1 is not refundable under any circumstance. It is paid when the
"investor's" visa is approved. If the "investor" is convicted of a felony, he is deported. He
may bring no one with him. No wife, no child, no aunt, no uncle. Unless he pays $1 million
for that person.
We will get a few thousand Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes a year under this
program
As to fixing the H-1B visa program, we charge employer users of the program say $25,000
per year per employee. We require the employers to inform all employees that if any is asked
to train a replacement, he should inform the DOJ immediately. The DOJ investigates and if
true, charges managerial employees who asked that a replacement be trained with fraud.
As to birthright citizenship: I say make it a five-year felony to have a child while in
the US illegally. Make it a condition of getting a tourist visa that one not be pregnant. If
the tourist visa lasts say 60 days and the woman has a child while in the US, she gets
charged with fraud.
None of these suggestions requires a constitutional amendment.
In the United States middle class prosperity reached its apogee in 1965 – before the
disastrous (and eminently foreseeable) wage-lowering consequence of the Hart-Celler Open
Immigration Act's massive admission of foreigners increased the supply of labor which began
to lower middle class prosperity and to shrink and eradicate the middle class.
It was in 1965 that ordinary Americans, enjoying maximum employment because employers were
forced to compete for Americans' talents and labor, wielded their peak purchasing
power . Since 1970 wages have remained stagnant, and since 1965 the purchasing power of
ordinary Americans has gone into steep decline.
It is long past time to halt Perpetual Mass Immigration into the United States, to end
birthright citizenship, and to deport all illegal aliens – if, that is, our leaders
genuinely care about and represent us ordinary Americans instead of continuing their
legislative, policy, and judicial enrichment of the 1-percenter campaign donor/rentier class
of transnational Globali$t Open Border$ E$tabli$hment $ellout$.
Re the birthright citizenship argument, that is not settled law in that SCOTUS has never
ruled on the question of whether a child born in the US is thereby a citizen if the parents
are illegally present. Way back in 1897, SCOTUS did resolve the issue of whether a child born
to alien parents who were legally present was thereby a citizen. That case is U.S. vs Wong
Kim Ark 169 US 649. SCOTUS ruled in favor of citizenship. If that was a justiciable issue how
much more so is it when the parents are illegally present?
My thinking is that the result would be the same but, at least, the question would be
settled. I cannot see justices returning a toddler to Beijing or worse. They would never have
invitations to cocktail parties again for the shame heaped upon them for such uncaring
conduct. Today, the title of citizen is conferred simply by bureaucratic rule, not by
judicial order.
Arguments Against Fourteenth Amendment Anchor Baby Interpretation
J. Paige Straley
Part One. Anchor Baby Argument, Mexican Case.
The ruling part of the US Constitution is Amendment Fourteen: "All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of
the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
Here is the ruling part of the Mexican Constitution, Section II, Article Thirty:
Article 30
Mexican nationality is acquired by birth or by naturalization:
A. Mexicans by birth are:
I. Those born in the territory of the Republic, regardless of the nationality of
their parents:
II. Those born in a foreign country of Mexican parents; of a Mexican father and
a foreign mother; or of a Mexican mother and an unknown father;
III. Those born on Mexican vessels or airships, either war or merchant vessels. "
A baby born to Mexican nationals within the United States is automatically a Mexican
citizen. Under the anchor baby reasoning, this baby acquires US citizenship at the same time
and so is a dual citizen. Mexican citizenship is primary because it stems from a primary
source, the parents' citizenship and the law of Mexico. The Mexican Constitution states the
child of Mexican parents is automatically a Mexican citizen at birth no matter where the
birth occurs. Since the child would be a Mexican citizen in any country, and becomes an
American citizen only if born in America, it is clear that Mexico has the primary claim of
citizenry on the child. This alone should be enough to satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment
jurisdiction thereof argument. Since Mexican citizenship is primary, it has primary
jurisdiction; thus by the plain words of the Fourteenth such child is not an American citizen
at birth.
[MORE]
There is a second argument for primary Mexican citizenship in the case of anchor babies.
Citizenship, whether Mexican or American, establishes rights and duties. Citizenship is a
reciprocal relationship, thus establishing jurisdiction. This case for primary Mexican
citizenship is supported by the fact that Mexico allows and encourages Mexicans resident in
the US, either illegal aliens or legal residents, to vote in Mexican elections. They are
counted as Mexican citizens abroad, even if dual citizens, and their government provides
widespread consular services as well as voting access to Mexicans residing in the US. As far
as Mexico is concerned, these persons are not Mexican in name only, but have a civil
relationship strong enough to allow a political voice; in essence, full citizenship. Clearly,
all this is the expression of typical reciprocal civic relationships expressed in legal
citizenship, further supporting the establishment of jurisdiction.
Part Two: Wong Kim Ark (1898) case. (Birthright Citizenship)
The Wong Kim Ark (WKA) case is often cited as the essential legal reasoning and precedent
for application of the fourteenth amendment as applied to aliens. There has been plenty of
commentary on WKA, but the truly narrow application of the case is emphasized reviewing a
concise statement of the question the case was meant to decide, written by Hon. Horace Gray,
Justice for the majority in this decision.
"[W]hether a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the
time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and
residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in
any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his
birth a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution." (Italics added.)
For WKA to justify birthright citizenship, the parents must have " permanent domicile and
residence " But how can an illegal alien have permanent residence when the threat of
deportation is constantly present? There is no statute of limitation for illegal presence in
the US and the passage of time does not eliminate the legal remedy of deportation. This alone
would seem to invalidate WKA as a support and precedent for illegal alien birthright
citizenship.
If illegal (or legal) alien parents are unemployed, unemployable, illegally employed, or
if they get their living by illegal means, then they are not ". . .carrying on business. .
.", and so the children of indigent or criminal aliens may not be eligible for birthright
citizenship
If legal aliens meet the two tests provided in WKA, birthright citizenship applies.
Clearly the WKA case addresses the specific situation of the children of legal aliens, and so
is not an applicable precedent to justify birthright citizenship for the children of illegal
aliens.
Part three. Birth Tourism
Occasionally foreign couples take a trip to the US during the last phase of the wife's
pregnancy so she can give birth in the US, thus conferring birthright citizenship on the
child. This practice is called "birth tourism." WKA provides two tests for birthright
citizenship: permanent domicile and residence and doing business, and a temporary visit
answers neither condition. WKA is therefore disqualified as justification for a "birth
tourism" child to be granted birthright citizenship.
@Carroll Price Unfortunately, that train left the station long ago. With or without
welfare, there's simply no way soft, spoiled, lazy, over-indulged Americans who have never
hit a lick at anything their life, will ever perform manual labor for anyone, including
themselves. Then let them starve to death. The Pilgrims nipped that dumb ass idea (welfare)
in the bud
An equally pressing problem, though, is the millions of foreigners who are living and
working here, and using our schools and hospitals and public services, who should not be
here.
Has it ever occurred to anyone other than me that the cost associated with
foreign workers using our schools and hospitals and pubic services for free, is more than
off-set by the cheap price being paid for grocery store items like boneless chicken breast,
grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce etc, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive even
for the wealthy?
Let alone relatively poor people (like myself) and those on fixed incomes? What
un-thinking Americans want, is having their cake and eating it too. Well, in the real world,
things just don't work that way. It's pay me now or pay me later. Once all the undocumented
workers who are doing all the dirty, nasty jobs Americans refuse to do are run out the
country, then what? Please look up;History; United States; pre mid-twentieth century. I'm
pretty sure Americans were eating chicken, grapes, apples, peaches, lettuce, etc. prior to
that period. I don't think their diet consisted of venison and tree bark.
But since I wasn't there, maybe I'm wrong and that is actually what they were eating.
I know some people born in the 1920′s; I'll check with them and let you know what they
say.
"... Bardella said Bannon had helped villainise McConnell, making him a toxic symbol of the Republican establishment and an albatross around the necks of vulnerable Republicans such as Jeff Flake of Arizona and Dean Heller of Nevada. A seat in Tennessee following Senator Bob Corker's announcement that he would not seek re-election in 2018 could also be a target. ..."
"... Among the "establishment" donors likely to oppose Bannon in a series of running battles are the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Bannon himself has admitted there is not "a deep bench" of viable candidates to represent his agenda. ..."
"... "The floodgates are open. You'll see a lot of this, one after another, and Steve Bannon's going to be at the centre of it. He's one for one. It'll be a civil war; it has been for quite some time." ..."
"... Andrew Surabian, a political strategist who worked under Bannon at the White House, told USA Today: "Bannon is plotting a strategy to launch an all-out assault on the Republican establishment. I think it's fair to say that if you're tied to Mitch McConnell, any of his henchmen in the consulting class, or were a Never-Trumper during the campaign, you're not safe from a primary challenge." ..."
"... Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino and Ben Jacobs ..."
Already Bannon is touring the country and meeting with candidates who will carry forward such
an agenda. He told the Bloomberg agency: "The populist-nationalist movement proved in Alabama that
a candidate with the right ideas and a grassroots organization can win big. Now, our focus is on
recruiting candidates to take over the Republican party."
The election eve rally in Alabama was a reunion of sorts of those in Bannon's political orbit.
Two potential candidates, Chris McDaniel of Mississippi and Mark Green of Tennessee, attended along
with Paul Nehlen, a primary challenger last year to the House speaker, Paul Ryan, whose campaign
was heavily promoted by Breitbart.
McDaniel described Moore's win as "incredibly inspiring" for his own challenge to Senator Roger
Wicker in 2018. "We know Mitch McConnell was rejected tonight and Roger Wicker is just another part
of Mitch McConnell's leadership apparatus," McDaniel told the Associated Press.
"We supported Donald
Trump because he was an agent of change, and he's still an agent of change. In this instance,
he must have been given bad advice to retain this particular swamp creature."
On Thursday, Bannon
spent two hours with Tom Tancredo, who worked on Nehlan's behalf and is considering a run for
Colorado governor next year. Tancredo, a former congressman, told the Guardian: "He was encouraged
by what happened in Alabama and was certainly hoping he can replicate it.
"He's trying to establish an awareness of the fact the Republican party should be standing for
the values he and others have tried to articulate over the years. It's a hugely difficult undertaking
when you consider the power of the establishment and the swamp. He just kept reiterating: 'I need
to try to save the country.'"
Asked about the prospect of a Republican civil war, Tancredo replied: "A good philosophic blood
letting is not necessarily a bad thing."
... ... ...
Bardella said Bannon had helped villainise McConnell, making him a toxic symbol of the Republican
establishment and an albatross around the necks of vulnerable Republicans such as Jeff Flake of Arizona
and Dean Heller of Nevada. A seat in Tennessee following Senator Bob Corker's announcement that he
would not seek re-election in 2018 could also be a target.
"Every dollar that is spent on a candidate by Mitch McConnell and the Republican party is a dollar
spent against them," Bardella added. "And that's because it plays right into the theme that they're
bought and paid for by the establishment."
Among the "establishment" donors likely to oppose Bannon in a series of running battles are
the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Bannon himself has admitted there is not "a deep
bench" of viable candidates to represent his agenda.
But he can expect at least tacit backing from Trump, who was said to be furious about having backed
the wrong horse in Alabama: the president even deleted three tweets that endorsed Strange. Bannon
also has powerful benefactors in the shape of the billionaire hedge fund investor Robert Mercer and
his daughter Rebekah Mercer.
The New York Times reported that Bannon and Robert Mercer began working out a rough outline for
a "shadow party" that would advance Trump's nationalist agenda during a
five-hour meeting last month at the family's Long Island estate.
Bannon has also been consulting with Henry Kissinger and other foreign policy veterans, Bloomberg
reported, and is preparing make the threat posed by China a central cause. "If we don't get our situation
sorted with China, we'll be destroyed economically," he said.
Rick Tyler, a political analyst and former campaign spokesman for the Texas senator Ted Cruz,
said: "Roy Moore has demonstrated that the establishment and all its money can be beaten. You can
only spend so much money in Alabama before it becomes irritating: you can only stuff so much in people's
mailboxes or run so many ads on TV.
"The floodgates are open. You'll see a lot of this, one after another, and Steve Bannon's
going to be at the centre of it. He's one for one. It'll be a civil war; it has been for quite
some time."
Republican memories are still raw from 2014, when the House majority leader,
Eric Cantor, was beaten in a primary contest by Dave Brat, a little-known professor backed by
the Tea Party. But Bannon could make the establishment versus Tea Party battle look like a mere skirmish.
Andrew Surabian, a political strategist who worked under Bannon at the White House,
told USA Today: "Bannon is plotting a strategy to launch an all-out assault on the Republican
establishment. I think it's fair to say that if you're tied to Mitch McConnell, any of his henchmen
in the consulting class, or were a Never-Trumper during the campaign, you're not safe from a primary
challenge."
Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino and Ben Jacobs
"... The Tea Party recognizes that "one of the primary sort of marks of the triumph of neoliberalism in the US is a very high tolerance of illegal immigration, and that illegal immigration is the kind of one plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires." The rise of illegal immigration represents a new form of capitalism, as opposed to the old "meritorious" capitalism of the post-war period. When right-wing ideologues attack "communism," the argument goes, they are actually conceptualizing neoliberalism. ..."
"... Michaels concedes that the Tea Party is a disproportionately upper middle class movement, but argues that even segments of the top twenty percentile of Americans by income have been hit hard in recent decades. ..."
"... The top one percent have been the big winners of the neoliberal era, while the other 19 percent in that bracket anxiously see their position falter in comparison. ..."
"... people in the Tea Party movement have a problem that is realer than "White male status anxiety," that the economic shifts that are taking place, the more and more extreme inequality, the more and more going to the top, no doubt some people may be unhappy because of loss of status, but many millions more are going to be unhappy because of the loss of actual money. ..."
Ideas spread in all sorts of directions. I've heard Christian right "intellectuals"
haphazardly invoke Gramsci and counter-hegemony and I myself have spent more of my youth than
I'm willing to admit reading back issues of National Review . It's probably less
of a stretch that some Tea Partiers have favorably nodded toward the ideas on their movement
that our friend Walter Benn Michaels expresses in his interview in the inaugural
Jacobin .
Here's my summary of Michaels's argument on the Tea Party and immigration, which brings up
the question, a question that shouldn't really be a question at all, about the left and open
borders. (My thoughts on the over-hyped and over-exposed Tea Party can be found over at
New Politics .)
Michaels identifies the Tea Party as a reaction against neoliberalism. He doesn't view the
challenge as a serious one, but also stresses that the movement, "is not simply a reaction
against neoliberalism from the old racist right." Michaels contests the American left's desire
to summarily reduce the Tea Party to racists: "They're thrilled when some Nazis come out and
say 'Yeah, we support the Tea Party' or some member of the Tea Party says something racist,
which is frequently enough." Michaels finds the subversive content of their political program
in an opposition to illegal immigration.
The Tea Party recognizes that "one of the primary sort of marks of the triumph of
neoliberalism in the US is a very high tolerance of illegal immigration, and that illegal
immigration is the kind of one plus ultra of the labor mobility that neoliberalism requires."
The rise of illegal immigration represents a new form of capitalism, as opposed to the old
"meritorious" capitalism of the post-war period. When right-wing ideologues attack "communism,"
the argument goes, they are actually conceptualizing neoliberalism.
Michaels concedes that the Tea Party is a disproportionately upper middle class movement,
but argues that even segments of the top twenty percentile of Americans by income have been hit
hard in recent decades.
The top one percent have been the big winners of the neoliberal era,
while the other 19 percent in that bracket anxiously see their position falter in comparison.
Responding to those who place the roots of this angst in the growing diversification of the
elite, Michaels says:
. . . people in the Tea Party movement have a problem that is realer than "White male
status anxiety," that the economic shifts that are taking place, the more and more extreme
inequality, the more and more going to the top, no doubt some people may be unhappy because
of loss of status, but many millions more are going to be unhappy because of the loss of
actual money. So my point isn't really to deny the phenomenon of status anxiety, it's just to
point out the extraordinary eagerness of American liberals to identify racism as the problem,
so that anti-racism (rather than anti-capitalism) can be the solution.
Michaels's conclusion is, in sum, that students of Friedrich Hayek and exalters of Ayn Rand
are the most visible source of resistance to neoliberalism on the American scene. Such a view,
I believe, is as contradictory as it appears...
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin .
"... If Only The God-Emperor Knew: Using Trump_vs_deep_state Against The Trump Administration" ..."
"... Republican Sen. Corker announces he won't seek re-election ..."
"... Associated Press, ..."
"... Corker's departure is widely being interpreted as a sign of the Establishment's inability to control the GOP base, as the election of President Trump, the rise of nationalism and the emergence of alternative media outlets (such as Breitbart and VDARE.com) make it harder for cuckservatives to Republican primary voters in line [ Sen. Bob Corker's retirement is notable for when it's happening ..."
"... Washington Post, ..."
"... And now, we have the ultimate proof in Alabama. Judge Roy Moore, one of the most persistent targets of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now the Republican nominee for the Senate. And he defeated incumbent Senator Luther Strange despite Strange being endorsed by President Donald J. Trump himself. ..."
"... Of course, Strange didn't just have Trump in his corner. He also had Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell using his PAC to run negative ads against Moore, ads which conservative websites called "defamatory" and which cost many millions of dollars [ McConnell's Super PAC accused of 'defaming ' Roy Moore ..."
"... McConnell's mortal enemy might soon be in his caucus ..."
"... Alabama rally: Trump campaigns in last-ditch effort for Senate candidate Luther Strange ..."
"... President Trump admits he doesn't 'know that much' about Alabama Senate contender Roy Moore, gets his name wrong in interview ..."
"... New York Daily News, ..."
"... During a debate with Strange, Moore suggested President Trump was being "redirected" by Mitch McConnell and others who "will not support his [Trump's] agenda" [ Alabama Senate debate erupts over whether McConnell is manipulating Trump ..."
"... Brexit Hero Farage in Alabama: Judge Roy Moore 'Not Going To Be Sucked Into The Swamp' ..."
"... Sarah Palin endorses Judge Roy Moore for US Senate ..."
"... Western Journalism, ..."
"... Ben Carson Splits With Trump, Basically Endorses Roy Moore in Alabama ..."
"... Talking Points Memo, ..."
"... Gorka: Trump Was Pressured to Endorse 'Swamp Dweller' Strange ..."
"... , Fox News, ..."
"... The Breitbart Universe Unites For Roy Moore ..."
"... The Atlantic, ..."
"... Trump's advisors seem to know this. In the Fox News ..."
"... Roy Moore Wins Senate G.O.P. Runoff in Alabama ..."
"... How Alabama Senate Election Results Could Trigger Trump's Impeachment ..."
"... Trump supports Strange, but says it may be "mistake," ..."
"... Washington Post, ..."
"... Roy Moore: 'I can't wait' for Trump to 'campaign like hell' for me ..."
"... Washington Examiner, ..."
"... Chamber of Commerce: 'Shut Down' Roy Moore & 'Remind Bannon Who's In Charge' ..."
"... Trump should seize on the narrative of his supposed opponents. He is unquestionably being given objectively poor political counsel by his aides!not surprising how utterly incompetent the Republican Establishment is when it comes to political strategy. [ Steve Bannon: We Need A Review After This Alabama Race To See How Trump Came To Endorse Someone Like Luther Strange ..."
"... Trump's N.F.L. Critique a Calculated Attempt to Shore Up His Base ..."
"... New York Times, ..."
"... Today, those who defeated Trump in the Republican army are still proclaiming their loyalty to their Commander-in-Chief. But Donald Trump, memes aside, is not a sovereign or just a symbol. He is a man who created a political movement!and that movement expects results. The movement he created, and which put him in office, is desperate for him to lead on an America First agenda. ..."
"... If Trump does not give it results, the movement will eventually find a new leader. Roy Moore is almost certainly not that leader on a national scale. But in Alabama tonight, Moore proved he is stronger than the president himself. ..."
"... James Kirkpatrick [ Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc. ..."
He must have known what was coming. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a pillar of the cowardly
GOP Establishment , announced he would not be running for re-election on Tuesday [
Republican Sen. Corker announces he won't seek re-election, by Richard
Lardner and Erik Schelzig, Associated Press, September 26, 2017]. Corker's
departure is widely being interpreted as a sign of the Establishment's inability to control the
GOP base, as the election of President Trump, the rise of nationalism and the emergence of
alternative media outlets (such as Breitbart and VDARE.com) make it harder for cuckservatives
to Republican primary voters in line [ Sen. Bob Corker's retirement is notable for when it's happening, by
Amber Phillips, Washington Post, September 26, 2017]
And now, we have the ultimate proof in Alabama.
Judge Roy Moore, one of the most
persistent
targets of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now the Republican nominee for the Senate.
And he defeated incumbent Senator Luther Strange despite Strange being
endorsed by President Donald J. Trump himself.
Of course, Strange didn't just have Trump in his corner. He also had Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell using his PAC to run negative ads against Moore, ads which conservative
websites called "defamatory" and which cost many millions of dollars [ McConnell's
Super PAC accused of 'defaming ' Roy Moore, by Bob Unruh, WND,
August 3, 2017] As a result, Judge Moore openly campaigned against his party's own Senate
leader during the primary, claiming a victory for him would mean the end of McConnell's hapless
leadership. [ McConnell's
mortal enemy might soon be in his caucus, by Burgess Everett and Seung Min
Kim, Politico, September 18, 2017]
And yet, revealingly, Moore and his allies framed their insurgency against Trump's wishes as
an act of loyalty.
During a debate with Strange, Moore suggested President Trump was being "redirected" by
Mitch McConnell and others who "will not support his [Trump's] agenda" [ Alabama Senate debate erupts over whether McConnell is manipulating Trump, by Alex Isenstadt and Daniel Strauss, Politico, September 21,
2017]
And most importantly, it shows how the populist and nationalist movement is larger than
Trump himself.
Trump's advisors seem to know this. In the Fox News interview referenced above,
Dr. Gorka claimed "no one voted for Trump, we voted for his agenda." And during his speech in support of Moore,
Bannon referenced Jeff Sessions, not Trump, as
the "spiritual father of the populist and nationalist movement."
But does Trump himself know this? Already, the Main Stream Media is trying to present this
as a devastating defeat for the president personally. The New York Times kvetched
about Moore's social views and sneered that his victory "demonstrated in stark terms the limits
of Mr. Trump's clout" [ Roy Moore Wins Senate G.O.P. Runoff in Alabama, by Jonathan Martin and
Alexander Burns, September 26, 2017]. Jason Le Miere at Newsweek suggested Trump had
suffered his first major political defeat at the ballot box and hinted his political weakness
could trigger his impeachment. [ How
Alabama Senate Election Results Could Trigger Trump's Impeachment, September
26, 2017]
It's hardly a devastating defeat for President Trump when his supposed enemies are
fanatically loyal to him and his "allies" can't wait to stab him in the back.
Tellingly, Trump in his messy intuitive way is already embarking on a movement to shore up
his base by taking on the pro-Black Lives Matter and anti-American antics of the National
Football League [ Trump's
N.F.L. Critique a Calculated Attempt to Shore Up His Base, by Glenn Thrush
and Maggie Haberman, New York Times, September 25, 2017]. But such symbolic fights are
meaningless unless they are coupled with real action on trade and immigration policy.
Today, those who defeated Trump in the Republican army are still proclaiming their
loyalty to their Commander-in-Chief. But Donald Trump, memes aside, is not a sovereign or just
a symbol. He is a man who created a political movement!and that movement expects results. The
movement he created, and which put him in office, is desperate for him to lead on an America
First agenda.
If Trump does not give it results, the movement will eventually find a new leader. Roy
Moore is almost certainly not that leader on a national scale. But in Alabama tonight, Moore
proved he is stronger than the president himself.
Trump has given the Establishment Republicans their chance and they have failed him. It's
time for him to return to the people who have supported him from the very beginning.
James Kirkpatrick [ Email him] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from
Conservatism Inc.
Look people, it's time to grasp some basic politics. The heart might have said Roy Moore
but a leader can not think with his heart alone. Whatever happened in the GOP primary, Luther
Strange was going to remain in the Senate until January. There are big, important votes
coming up in Congress and Trump's margin of error in the Senate is virtually non-existent.
What sense does it make to alienate, even slight, a sitting Senator that has always voted
your way and has never trashed you in public?
It's hardly a devastating defeat for President Trump when his supposed enemies are
fanatically loyal to him and his "allies" can't wait to stab him in the back.
As a man who supposedly highly values personal loyalty, does Trump really not understand
that the men who pushed him to support Strange are also the men who will be first in line to
vote for impeachment the moment it looks as though the leftist establishment has found a
pretext that will succeed?
The movement better start paying attention to the thoughtcrime laws being passed right now
under the banner of "hatespeech". The first amendment isn't just a nice concept. People in
other countries are jailed for speaking their mind in the way Americans take for granted.
"... We should not be entangled in foreign wars merely at the whim and caprice of a President, Moore writes on his site. We must treat sovereign nations as we would want to be treated. ..."
"... It's too early to tell whether the nationalist hawks will be more or less interventionist overall than the internationalist, neocon hawks were, Daniel McCarthy, editor-at-large at the American Conservative ..."
...Steve Bannon told me Wednesday afternoon that he and Moore, who defeated Sen. Luther
Strange (whom President Trump had backed) for the Republican primary nomination in Alabama on
Tuesday, see eye to eye on global affairs, as well, and that, yes, he is every bit the
Bannonite on foreign policy.
Moore, the twice-ousted Alabama Chief Justice, is likely headed to the United States Senate.
Bannon and the Trump movement have often been depicted as essentially non-interventionist. My
recent
reportingindicates
a
caveat to that, however. While Bannon and his cohort might differ with the
blob on confronting Kim Jong Un in North Korea or Bashar al-Assad in Syria or Vladimir
Putin in Russia, they are much more suspicious of the government of Iran. ...
... ... ...
The judges website, Roymoore.org, features such language. We should not be entangled in
foreign wars merely at the whim and caprice of a President, Moore writes on his site. We must
treat sovereign nations as we would want to be treated.
But there are notable divergences from the paleocons. Like Bannon, Moore is a hawk for
Israel. We should pass the
Taylor Force Act and move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. His writing that the U.S. should
not rely on nuclear reduction treaties which leave us vulnerable to foreign powers and that it
should reject agreements or policies that undermine Israel's security clearly alludes to the
Iran deal. The pair would part company with Buchanan on that.
And like President Trump, Moore, a graduate of West Point, wants a bigger military. More
funding should be available to develop a missile defense system and to provide our Navy, Air
Force, Army, Marines, and Coast Guard with the most modern technology including weapon systems.
Respect for our strength is the best defense. Walk softly and carry a big stick is and should
be our guide.
... ... ...
It's too early to tell whether the nationalist hawks will be more or less
interventionist overall than the internationalist, neocon hawks were, Daniel McCarthy,
editor-at-large at the American Conservative , tells me. My guess is that while the
nationalists will speak more provocatively, abort diplomatic agreements, and ramp up `political
warfare, they'll engage in fewer large-scale, nation-building interventions. McCarthy adds
that religion is important here, as well. Moore and Bannon are both on record as deeply
religious. Neoconservative foreign policy is sold as a scheme for secular salvation, bringing
the blessings of liberalism and democracy and human rights to a world that eagerly awaits them,
says McCarthy. Moore's religious convictions might help to immunize him against a belief in
worldly salvation through American arms and advisers...
Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on
Twitter: @CurtMills.
President Trump's speech yesterday at the United Nations got rave reviews from neocons like
John Bolton and Elliot Abrams. The US president threatened North Korea, Venezuela, Syria,
Yemen, and Iran. At the same time he claimed that the US is the one country to lead by example
rather than by violating the sovereignty of others. Are the neocons on a roll as they push for
more war? Have they "won" Trump?
Although he speaks about the USA being occupied, looks like Saker does not understand that that
the US empire is actually a global neoliberal empire where multinationals and financial oligarchy have
political control. And without a viable alternative it probably will not collapse, as any collapse presuppose
the withdrawal of support. The necessary level of isolation is possible only if a an alternative is
present
Now like in befor the World War Ii there is struggle for "spheres of influence", in which the USA
is gradually losing as both Germany and Japan restored their industrial potential and China is a new
powerful player on the world scene, which now is allied with Russia with its formidable nuclear deterrent
that now anti-missile defense can neutralize"
Also the USA venture into Ukraine means the completion of revision of the results of WWII, which
opened a new can of worms for the USA making Russia essentially a hostile power (which neocon admit
and try to exploit via the current neo-McCarthism witch hunt)
Notable quotes:
"... Trump wins. Problem: he will be completely alone. The Neocons have a total, repeat total, control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies. ..."
"... In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka "the basket of deplorables") the Neocons have had to show their true face. By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people. ..."
"... And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce. So yes, the Neocons have won. But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse. ..."
"... Externally, the US foreign policy is basically "frozen" and in lieu of a foreign policy we now only have a long series of empty threats hurled at a list of demonized countries which are now promised "fire and brimstone" should they dare to disobey Uncle Sam. ..."
"... This bizarre, and illegal, form of a "vote of no-confidence" further hammers in the message that Trump is either a madman, a traitor, or both. ..."
"... Organizationally, it is clear that Trump is surrounded by enemies as illustrated by the absolutely outrageous fact that he can't even talk to a foreign head of state without having the transcript of his conversation leaked to the Ziomedia . ..."
"... I believe that these all are preparatory steps to trigger a major crisis and use it to remove Trump, either by a process of impeachment, or by force under the pretext of some crisis. Just look at the message which the Ziomedia has been hammeing into the brains of the US population. ..."
"... just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles! ..."
"... when the cat is gone, the mice dance ..."
"... The mouse dreams dreams that would terrify the cat ..."
"... Third, for all the encouraging statistics about the Dow Jones, unemployment and growth, the reality is that the US society is rapidly transforming itself in a three-tired one: on top, a small number of obscenely rich people, under them, a certain amount of qualified professionals who service the filthy rich and who struggle to maintain a lifestyle which in the past was associated with the middle-class. And then the vast majority of Americans who basically are looking at making "minimal wage plus a little something" and who basically survive by not paying for health insurance, by typically working two jobs, by eating cheap and unhealthy "prolefeed" and by giving up on that which every American worker could enjoy in the 1950s and 1960s (have one parent at home, have paid holidays, a second vacation home, etc.). Americans are mostly hard workers and, so far, most of them are surviving, but they are mostly one paycheck away from seriously bad poverty. A lot of them only make ends meet because they get help from their parents and grand-parents (the same is true of southern Europe, by the way). A large segment of the US population now survives only because of Walmart and the Dollar Store. Once that fails, food stamps are the last option. That, or jail, of course. ..."
"... No wonder that when so many Americans heard Hillary's comment about the "basket of deplorables" they took that as declaration of war. ..."
"... Whatever may be the case, by their manic insistence, on one hand, to humiliate and crush Trump and, on the other, to repress millions of Americans the Neocons are committing a double mistake. First, they are showing their true face and, second, they are subverting the very institutions they are using to control and run this country. ..."
"... What makes the gradual collapse of the AngloZionist Empire so uniquely dangerous is that it is by far the biggest and most powerful empire in world history. No empire has ever had the quasi monopoly on power the USA enjoyed since WWII. By any measure, military, economic, political, social, the US came out of WWII as a giant and while there were ups and downs during the subsequent decades, the collapse of the USSR only reaffirmed what appeared to be the total victory of the United States. ..."
"... And if Obama was probably the most incompetent President in US history, Trump will be the first one to be openly lynched while in office. As a result, the AngloZionist Empire is now like a huge freight train which has lost its locomotive but still has an immense momentum pushing it forward even though there is nobody in control any more. The rest of the planet, with the irrelevant exception of the East Europeans, is now scrambling in horror to get out of the path of this out of control train. So far, the tracks (minimal common sense, political realities) are more or less holding, but a crash (political, economic or military) could happen at any moment. And that is very, very scary. ..."
"... The US has anywhere between 700 to 1000 military bases worldwide, the entire international financial system is deeply enmeshed with the US economy, the US Dollar is still the only real reserve currency, United States Treasury securities are held by all the key international players (including Russia and China), SWIFT is politically controlled by the US, the US is the only country in the world that can print as much money as it wants and, last but not least, the US has a huge nuclear arsenal. As a result, a US collapse would threaten everybody and that means that nobody would want to trigger one. The collapse of the Soviet Union threatened the rest of mankind only in one way: by its nuclear arsenal. In contrast, any collapse of the United States would threaten everybody in many different ways. ..."
"... This is the irony of our situation: even though the entire planet is sick and tried of the incompetent arrogance of the AngloZionists, nobody out there wants their Empire to catastrophically collapse. And yet, with the Neocons in power, such a collapse appears inevitable with potentially devastating consequences for everybody. ..."
"... This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness, infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization: how did we ever let things get that far?! ..."
"... My biggest hope with Trump was that he would be willing to sacrifice the Empire for the sake of the US (the opposite of what the Neocons are doing: they are willing to sacrifice the US for the sake of their Empire) and that he would manage a relatively safe and hopefully non-violent transition from Empire to "normal country" for the US. Clearly, this is ain't happening. Instead, the Neocons are threatening everybody: the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Venezuelans of course, but also the Europeans (economically), the entire Middle-East (via the "only democracy in the Middle-East"), all the developing countries and even the American people. Heck, they are even threatening the US President himself, and in not-so-subtle ways! ..."
"... my overwhelming sense is that Trump will be removed from office, either for "high crimes and misdemeanors" or for "medical reasons" (they will simply declare him insane and unfit to be the President). ..."
"... The evil hand of the "Russian KGB" (yes, I know, the KGB was dissolved in 1991) will be found everywhere, especially amongst US libertarians (who will probably the only ones with enough brains to understand what is taking place). The (pseudo-) "Left" will rejoice. ..."
"... Should this course of action result in an unexpected level or resistance, either regional or social, a 9-11 false flag followed by a war will the most likely scenario (why stray away from something which worked so well the first time around?!). ..."
"... in 1991 when the US sent the 82nd AB to Iraq there was nothing standing between this light infantry force and the Iraqi armored divisions. Had the Iraqis attacked the plan was to use tactical nuclear weapons. Then this was all quickly forgotten ..."
"... There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem, especially when they are the ones who triggered the mayhem in the first place. This means that as long as the Neocons are anywhere near in power they will never, ever, allow peace to suddenly break out, lest the spotlight be suddenly shined directly upon them. Chaos, wars, crises – this is their natural habitat. Think of it as the by-product of their existence. Eventually, of course, they will be stopped and they will be defeated, like all their predecessors in history. But I shudder when I think of the price mankind will have to pay this time around. ..."
In October of last year a wrote an analysis I entitled
The USA are about to face the worst crisis of their history and how Putin's example might inspire
Trump and I think that this is a good time to revisit it now. I began the analysis by looking
at the calamities which would befall the United States if Hillary was elected. Since this did not
happen (thank God!), we can safely ignore that part and look at my prediction of what would happen
if Trump was elected. Here is what I wrote:
Trump wins. Problem: he will be completely alone. The Neocons have a total, repeat total,
control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton
they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies. The
Fed is their stronghold. How in the world will Trump deal with these rabid "
crazies in the basement "? Consider the vicious hate campaign which all these "personalities"
(from actors, to politicians to reporters) have unleashed against Trump – they have burned their
bridges, they know that they will lose it all if Trump wins (and, if he proves to be an easy pushover
his election will make no difference anyway). The Neocons have nothing to lose and they will fight
to the very last one.
What could Trump possibly do to get anything done if he is surrounded by Neocons and
their agents of influence? Bring in an entirely different team? How is he going to vet them? His
first choice was to take Pence as a VP – a disaster (he is already sabotaging Trump on Syria and
the elections outcome). I *dread* the hear whom Trump will appoint as a White House Chief of Staff
as I am afraid that just to appease the Neocons he will appoint some new version of the infamous
Rahm Emanuel And should Trump prove that he has both principles and courage, the Neocons can always
"Dallas" him and replace him with Pence. Et voilà !
Less than a month ago
I warned that a 'color revolution ' was taking place in the USA . My first element of proof
was the so-called "investigation" which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President
Trump's candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn. Tonight, the plot to get
rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and
General Flynn had to
offer his resignation . Trump accepted it. Now let's immediately get one thing out of the
way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world.
That he was not. However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump's national security policy
. ( ) The Neocon run 'deep state' has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that
he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian
ambassador. And Trump accepted this resignation. Ever since Trump made it to the White House,
he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood
doubleplusgoodthinking "stars" and even from European politicians. And Trump took each
blow without ever fighting back. Nowhere was his famous "you are fired!" to be seen. But I still
had hope. I wanted to hope. I felt that it was my duty to hope. But now Trump has betrayed us
all. Again, Flynn was not my hero. But he was, by all accounts, Trump's hero. And Trump betrayed
him. The consequences of this will be immense. For one thing, Trump is now clearly broken. It
took the 'deep state' only weeks to castrate Trump and to make him bow to the powers that be .
Those who would have stood behind Trump will now feel that he will not stand behind them and they
will all move back away from him. The Neocons will feel elated by the elimination of their worst
enemy and emboldened by this victory they will push on, doubling-down over and over and over again.
It's over, folks, the deep state has won.
I then concluded that the consequences of this victory would catastrophic for the United States:
In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka "the basket of deplorables")
the Neocons have had to show their true face. By their rejection of the outcome of the elections,
by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first,
that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which
rules against the will of the American people. In other words, just like Israel, the USA
has no legitimacy left. And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their
enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce. So yes, the
Neocons have won. But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse.
I think that what we are seeing today are the first signs of the impending collapse.
The symptoms of the agony
Externally, the US foreign policy is basically "frozen" and in lieu of a foreign policy we now
only have a long series of empty threats hurled at a list of demonized countries which are now promised
"fire and brimstone" should they dare to disobey Uncle Sam. While this makes for good headlines,
this does not qualify as a "policy" of any kind (I discussed this issue at length during
my recent interview
with SouthFront ). And then there is Congress which has basically
stripped Trump from his powers to conduct foreign policy . This bizarre, and illegal, form
of a "vote of no-confidence" further hammers in the message that Trump is either a madman, a traitor,
or both. Internally, the latest riots in Charlottesville now being blamed on Trump who, after
being a Putin agent is now further demonized as some kind of Nazi (see Paul Craig Roberts'
first and
second warnings about this dynamic)
Organizationally, it is clear that Trump is surrounded by enemies as illustrated by the absolutely
outrageous fact that he can't even talk to a foreign head of state without having the
transcript of his conversation leaked to the Ziomedia .
I believe that these all are preparatory steps to trigger a major crisis and use it to remove
Trump, either by a process of impeachment, or by force under the pretext of some crisis. Just look
at the message which the Ziomedia has been hammeing into the brains of the US population.
The psychological preparation for the forthcoming coup: scaring them all to death Here are three
very telling examples taken from Newsweek's front page:
... ... ...
Ask yourself, what is the message here? Trump is a traitor, he works for Putin, Putin wants to
destroy democracy in the United States and these two men together are the most dangerous men on the
planet . This is a " plot against America ", no less! Not bad, right? "They" are clearly out there
go get "us" and "we" are all in terrible danger: Kim Jong-un is about to declare nuclear war on the
US, Xi and Putin are threatening the world with their armies, and "our" own President came to power
courtesy of the "Russian KGB" and "Putin's hackers", he now works for the Russians, he is also clearly
a Nazi, a White supremacist, a racist and, possibly, a "
new Hitler " (
as is Putin , of course!).
And then, there are those truly scary Mooslims and Aye-rabs who apparently want only two things
in life: destroy "our way of life" and kill all the "infidels". This is why we need the TSA, 16 intelligence
agencies and militarized police SWAT teams everywhere: in case the terrorists come to get us where
we live.
Dangerous international consequences
This would all be rather funny if it was not also extremely dangerous. For one thing, the US is
really poking at a dangerous foe when it constantly tries to scare Kim Jong-un and the DPRK leadership.
No, not because of the North Korean nukes (which are probably not real nuclear capable ICBMs but
a not necessarily compatible combination of nuclear 'devices' and intermediate range ballistic missiles)
but because of the huge and hard to destroy conventional North Korean military. The real threat are
not missiles, but a deadly combination of conventional artillery and special forces which present
very little danger to the US or the US military, but which present a huge threat for the population
of Seoul and the northern section of South Korea. Nukes, in whatever form, are really only an added
problem, a toxic "icing" on an already very dangerous 'conventional cake'.
[Sidebar - a real life nightmare : Now, if you *really* want to terrify yourself and stay awake
all night then consider the following. While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane
and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if
I am wrong? What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or,
which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion
that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families
and friends? What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate? Well, let me tell you: forget about
Guam; think Tokyo! Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems,
DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the
Keihanshin region encompassing
Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the
Hanshin Industrial
Region . The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated
(37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain an immense number of industries, many of which
would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles. Not only that, but
a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of
international economic collapse. So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans
what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis
for the entire planet. During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against
Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind. The Japanese
landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war lay waste to
the entire country. This is still true today, only more so. And just imagine the reaction in
South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by
missiles!The
South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear , by the way. As for the Japanese,
they are officially
placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!).
So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible
indeed, nukes or no nukes]
What we are observing now is positive feedback loop in which each move by the Neocons results
in a deeper and deeper destabilization of the entire system. Needless to say, this is extremely dangerous
and can only result in an eventual catastrophe/collapse. In fact, the signs that the US is totally
losing control are already all over the place, here are just a few headlines to illustrate this:
A French expression goes " when the cat is gone, the mice dance ", and this is exactly
what is happening now: the US is both very weak and basically absent. As for the Armenians, they
say " The mouse dreams dreams that would terrify the cat ". Well, the "mice" of the world
are dancing and dreaming and simply ignoring the "cat". Every move the cat makes only makes things
worse for him. The world is moving on, while the cat is busy destroying himself.
Dangerous domestic consequences
First on my list would be race riots. In fact, they are already happening all over the United
States, but they are rarely presented as such. And I am not talking about the "official" riots of
Black Lives Matter, which are bad enough, I am talking about the many mini-riots which the official
media is systematically trying to obfuscate. Those interested in this topic should read the book
here ). The simple truth is that no regime can survive for too long when it proactively supports
the exact opposite of what it officially is supposed to stand for. The result? I have yet to meet
an adult American who would sincerely believe that he/she lives in the "land of the free and the
home of the brave". Maybe infants still buy this stuff, but even teenagers know that this is a load
of bull.
Third, for all the encouraging statistics about the Dow Jones, unemployment and growth, the
reality is that the US society is rapidly transforming itself in a three-tired one: on top, a small
number of obscenely rich people, under them, a certain amount of qualified professionals who service
the filthy rich and who struggle to maintain a lifestyle which in the past was associated with the
middle-class. And then the vast majority of Americans who basically are looking at making "minimal
wage plus a little something" and who basically survive by not paying for health insurance, by typically
working two jobs, by eating cheap and unhealthy "prolefeed" and by giving up on that which every
American worker could enjoy in the 1950s and 1960s (have one parent at home, have paid holidays,
a second vacation home, etc.). Americans are mostly hard workers and, so far, most of them are surviving,
but they are mostly one paycheck away from seriously bad poverty. A lot of them only make ends meet
because they get help from their parents and grand-parents (the same is true of southern Europe,
by the way). A large segment of the US population now survives only because of Walmart and the Dollar
Store. Once that fails, food stamps are the last option. That, or jail, of course.
Combine all this and you get a potentially extremely explosive situation. No wonder that when
so many Americans heard Hillary's comment about the "basket of deplorables" they took that as declaration
of war.
And how do the Neocons plan to deal with all this? By cracking down on free speech and dissent,
of course! What else? Their only response – repression of course!
YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter – they are all cracking down on "bad" speech which includes
pretty much any topic a garden variety self-described 'liberal' frowns upon.
GoDaddy
and
Google are even going after domain names. Oh sure, nobody gets thrown in jail for, say, defending
the 2nd Amendment, but they get "demonetized" and their accounts simply closed. It's not the cops
cracking down on free speech, it's "Corporate America", but the effect is the same. Apparently, the
Neocons do not realize that censorship is not a viable strategy in the age of the Internet. Or maybe
they do, and they are deliberately trying to trigger a backlash?
Then there is the vilification campaign in the media: unless you are some kind of 'minority' you
are assumed to be nefarious by birth and guilty of all the evils on the planet. And your leader is
Trump, of course, or maybe even Putin himself, vide supra. Christian heterosexual White
males better run for cover
Whatever may be the case, by their manic insistence, on one hand, to humiliate and crush Trump
and, on the other, to repress millions of Americans the Neocons are committing a double mistake.
First, they are showing their true face and, second, they are subverting the very institutions they
are using to control and run this country. That, of course, only further weaken the Neocons
and the United States themselves and that further accelerates the positive feedback loop mentioned
above which now threatens the entire international system.
Us and Them
What makes the gradual collapse of the AngloZionist Empire so uniquely dangerous is that it
is by far the biggest and most powerful empire in world history. No empire has ever had the quasi
monopoly on power the USA enjoyed since WWII. By any measure, military, economic, political, social,
the US came out of WWII as a giant and while there were ups and downs during the subsequent decades,
the collapse of the USSR only reaffirmed what appeared to be the total victory of the United States.
In my admittedly subjective opinion, the last competent (no, I did not say 'good', I said 'competent')
US President was George Herbert Walker Bush who, unlike his successors, at least knew how to run
an Empire. After that, it is all downhill, faster and faster. And if Obama was probably the most
incompetent President in US history, Trump will be the first one to be openly lynched while in office.
As a result, the AngloZionist Empire is now like a huge freight train which has lost its locomotive
but still has an immense momentum pushing it forward even though there is nobody in control any more.
The rest of the planet, with the irrelevant exception of the East Europeans, is now scrambling in
horror to get out of the path of this out of control train. So far, the tracks (minimal common sense,
political realities) are more or less holding, but a crash (political, economic or military) could
happen at any moment. And that is very, very scary.
The US has anywhere between 700 to 1000 military bases worldwide, the entire international
financial system is deeply enmeshed with the US economy, the US Dollar is still the only real reserve
currency, United States Treasury securities are held by all the key international players (including
Russia and China), SWIFT is politically controlled by the US, the US is the only country in the world
that can print as much money as it wants and, last but not least, the US has a huge nuclear arsenal.
As a result, a US collapse would threaten everybody and that means that nobody would want to trigger
one. The collapse of the Soviet Union threatened the rest of mankind only in one way: by its nuclear
arsenal. In contrast, any collapse of the United States would threaten everybody in many different
ways.
So the real question now is this: can the rest of the planet prevent a catastrophic collapse of
the AngloZionist Empire?
This is the irony of our situation: even though the entire planet is sick and tried of the
incompetent arrogance of the AngloZionists, nobody out there wants their Empire to catastrophically
collapse. And yet, with the Neocons in power, such a collapse appears inevitable with potentially
devastating consequences for everybody.
This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the
American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has
somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness,
infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and
at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization:
how did we ever let things get that far?!
And the next obvious question: can we still stop them?
I honestly don't know. I hope so, but I am not sure. My biggest hope with Trump was that he
would be willing to sacrifice the Empire for the sake of the US (the opposite of what the Neocons
are doing: they are willing to sacrifice the US for the sake of their Empire) and that he would manage
a relatively safe and hopefully non-violent transition from Empire to "normal country" for the US.
Clearly, this is ain't happening. Instead, the Neocons are threatening everybody: the Chinese, the
Russians, the North Koreans and the Venezuelans of course, but also the Europeans (economically),
the entire Middle-East (via the "only democracy in the Middle-East"), all the developing countries
and even the American people. Heck, they are even threatening the US President himself, and in not-so-subtle
ways!
So what's next?
Truly, I don't know. But my overwhelming sense is that Trump will be removed from office,
either for "high crimes and misdemeanors" or for "medical reasons" (they will simply declare him
insane and unfit to be the President). Seeing how weak and spineless Trump is, he might even
be "convinced" to resign. I don't see them simply murdering him simply because he is no Kennedy either.
After that, Pence comes to power and it will all be presented like a wonderful event, a group-hug
of the elites followed by an immediate and merciless crackdown on any form of political opposition
or dissent which will immediately be labeled as racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, terrorist, etc.
The evil hand of the "Russian KGB" (yes, I know, the KGB was dissolved in 1991) will be found
everywhere, especially amongst US libertarians (who will probably the only ones with enough brains
to understand what is taking place). The (pseudo-) "Left" will rejoice.
Should this course of action result in an unexpected level or resistance, either regional
or social, a 9-11 false flag followed by a war will the most likely scenario (why stray away from
something which worked so well the first time around?!). Unless the US decides to re-invade
Grenada or give Nauru a much deserved thrashing, any more or less real war will result in a catastrophic
failure for the US at which point the use of nukes by the Neocon crazies might become a very real
risk, especially if symbolic US targets such as aircraft carriers are hit ( in 1991 when the
US sent the 82nd AB to Iraq there was nothing standing between this light infantry force and the
Iraqi armored divisions. Had the Iraqis attacked the plan was to use tactical nuclear weapons. Then
this was all quickly forgotten ).
There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind
the mayhem, especially when they are the ones who triggered the mayhem in the first place. This means
that as long as the Neocons are anywhere near in power they will never, ever, allow peace to suddenly
break out, lest the spotlight be suddenly shined directly upon them. Chaos, wars, crises – this is
their natural habitat. Think of it as the by-product of their existence. Eventually, of course, they
will be stopped and they will be defeated, like all their predecessors in history. But I shudder
when I think of the price mankind will have to pay this time around.
"... Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a theater as well but for a different audience. ..."
"... What about Viktor Orbán? What about the whole Visegrad Group? What about Marine Le Pen? Do you side with them, or against them, in their struggle against the wholesale cultural transformation of Europe through mass immigration? ..."
"... The Empire "lowerarchy" only needs entertain the voter masses during the theatric event popularly known as POTUS elections. They know that the People never get a candidate choice which is not pre-approved. ..."
"... In fact, I intuit that The Empire appreciates having even major "idiot" donors to their uni-Party campaign theater. ..."
Good points, Priss Factor, and I will add one for your consideration.
At Davos 2017, Anthony Scaramucci assured the congregation that "President Trump is
the last hope of the globalists."
I am mindful how powerful forces of Deception can cunningly co-opt populism /
nationalism to their N.W.O. advantage.
A question.
Do you believe international banksters gave the Brits an opportunity to decide whether
"in or out" of the EUROPEAN UNION?
I think the Brexit outcome was theater, a globalist "invasion" & occupation of
planet-scale perception.
Thanks and I trust you will reply!
===
I think the Brexit outcome was theater
Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people
who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under
German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey
to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU
plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a
theater as well but for a different audience.
@Vinteuil If The Powers That
Be (TPTB) in Europe constantly attacked Islam & demanded the repatriation of Muslims to
their homelands, the Dinh/Revusky thesis would at least *make sense.* The hatred of Muslims
by TPTB would explain why they go to such trouble to fake all these attacks.
But, in fact, said powers endlessly insist that Not All Muslims Are Like That, and do
everything they can to import more of them.
Angela Merkel, anybody? Jean-Claude Juncker? The entire European MSM? I mean, hello?
And they stigmatize anybody who doubts the wisdom of this policy - like, say, Marine Le
Pen or Viktor Orbán - as "far right" extremists! Serious question, VD/JR:
What about Viktor Orbán? What about the whole Visegrad Group? What about Marine
Le Pen? Do you side with them, or against them, in their struggle against the wholesale
cultural transformation of Europe through mass immigration?
Yes, in the sense that it had nothing to do with fulfilling the expectations of people
who voted for it. But certainly it may had something to do with weakening the EU under
German and to lesser extent French leadership. Releasing thousands of refugees from Turkey
to Europe in 2015 in the direction of Germany was probably also a part of weakening the EU
plan. The wholehearted welcoming of refugees by Merkel and German elites is a part of a
theater as well but for a different audience. Utu,
For me, the title of this article alone is a learning experience.
The Empire "lowerarchy" only needs entertain the voter masses during the theatric event
popularly known as POTUS elections. They know that the People never get a candidate choice
which is not pre-approved.
In fact, I intuit that The Empire appreciates having even major "idiot" donors to their
uni-Party campaign theater.
"... Jeb's 2016 departure draws out Mike Murphy critics , ..."
"... Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency ..."
"... Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyon ..."
"... Tensions Between and Within the Two Parties, ..."
"... When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as a "blunt instrument for us," a man who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up twenty years." ..."
"... Devil's Bargain ..."
"... the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them: despite how powerful the Establishment may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and the people it rules!for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many members of this Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have been more successful in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed, without much evidence, that undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump presidency was too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their candidate off to Arizona in the final days. ..."
"... Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading him to declare upon leaving the White House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." [ Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017] ..."
"... But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact that the current president is Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an election. Unlike GOP strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing. ..."
Throughout 2016, I would occasionally turn on the television to see how the punditocracy was responding to the mounting
Trump tsunami . If you get most of your news online, watching cable news is frustrating. The commentary is so
dumbed down and painfully
reflective of speaker's biases, you can always basically guess what's coming next. With a few exceptions!above all
Ann Coulter 's famous
June 19, 2015 prediction
of a Trump victory on
Bill Maher !these pundits again and again told us that Trump would eventually go away, first after he made this or that gaffe,
then after he "failed" in a debate, then after people actually started voting in the primaries.
The most interesting cases to me: the "
Republican
strategists ," brought on to CNN and MSNBC to give the audience the illusion that they were hearing both sides: Nicole Wallace,
Steve Schmidt, Ana Navarro, Rick Wilson, Margaret Hoover, Todd Harris.
Mike Murphy even convinced donors to hand him over $100 million to make Jeb Bush the next president! [ Jeb's 2016
departure draws out Mike Murphy critics , By Maeve Reston, February 22, 2016]
With campaigns and donors throwing money at these people, and the Main Stream Media touting them, it was easy to assume they must
know what they were talking about. Significantly, each of these pundits was a national security hawk, center-right on economic issues,
and just as horrified by "
racism " and "
sexism
" as their
Leftist counterparts . By a remarkable coincidence, the "
strategic
" advice that they gave to Republican candidates lined up perfectly with these positions. Their prominence was a mirage created
by the fact that the
MSM handed this
token opposition the
Megaphone
because they did not challenge the core prejudices of the
bipartisan Ruling Class.
And of course they were all humiliated in a spectacular fashion, November 8 being only the climax.
Joshua Green begins his book Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon,
Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by giving us a view inside the Trump campaign on election night, before
tracing Steve Bannon's path up to that point. Reliving the journey is one of the joys of Green's work, which is mostly an intellectual
biography of Steve Bannon,
with a special focus on his relationship with Trump and the election.
Bannon
joined the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 without any previous experience in electoral politics. But like the candidate
himself, the Breitbart editor showed that he understood the nature of American politics and the GOP base
better than Establishment Republicans. The "strategists'" supposed "expertise," "strategic advice," and "analysis" was in reality
built on a house of cards. (In fact, the
Bannon-Trump
view of the electorate is closer to the
consensus among
political scientists that, unlike more nationalist and populist policies,
Republican Establishment positions have relatively little popular support. [
Political
Divisions in 2016 and Beyon d | Tensions Between and Within the Two Parties, Voter Study Group, June 2017]).
Bannon at Breitbart.com gave the Republican base what it wanted. Moral: in a democracy, you always have a chance at winning when
public opinion (or at least intraparty opinion) is on your side.
Green traces Bannon's journey from his
Irish-Catholic working-class
roots and traditionalist upbringing, to his time in the Navy, at Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs, and finally Breitbart.com
and the pinnacle of American politics. The picture that
emerges is of a man with principles and vigor, refusing to submit to the inertia that is part of the human condition, with enough
confidence to realize that life is too short to not make major changes when staying on the current path is not going to allow him
to accomplish his goals.
For example, Bannon originally wanted a career in defense policy, and took a job in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration.
Yet he was off to Harvard Business School when he realized that the rigid
bureaucracy that he was a part of would not let him move up to a high-level position until he was middle-aged. Decades later,
after taking over his website upon the unexpected death
of Andrew Breitbart in 2012, it would have been easy to go low-risk!sticking to Establishment scripts, making life comfortable
for Republican elites, implicitly submitting to the taboos of the Left.
Instead , he helped turn Breitbart News into a major voice of the populist tide that has been remaking center-right politics
across the globe.
When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as a "blunt instrument for us," a man
who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up twenty years."
From Green, we learn much about Bannon's intellectual influences. Surprisingly, although he was raised as a Roman Catholic and
maintains that faith today, we find out that Bannon briefly practiced Zen Buddhism while in the Navy. There are other unusual influences
that make appearances in the book, including Rightist philosopher
Julius Evola and
René Guénon,
a French occultist who eventually became a Sufi Muslim. Although not exactly my cup of tea, such eccentric intellectual interests
reflect a curious mind that refuses to restrict itself to fashionable influences.
It's incorrect to call Devil's Bargain a biography. There is practically no mention of Bannon's personal life!wives,
children. I had to Google to find out that he has three daughters. His childhood is only discussed in the context of how it may have
influenced his beliefs and political development.
Rather, we get information on Bannon's intellectual and career pursuits and his relationships with consequential figures such
as mega-donor Robert Mercer, Andrew Breitbart and Donald Trump.
As Bannon exits the White House and returns to Breitbart, we must hope that Bannon and the movement he's helped to create accomplish
enough in the future to inspire more complete biographies.
But the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them: despite how powerful the Establishment
may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and the people it rules!for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many
members of this Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have been more successful
in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed,
without much evidence, that undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump presidency was
too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their
candidate off to Arizona in the final days.
Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading him to declare upon leaving the White
House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." [
Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017]
But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact that the current president is Donald
Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an
election. Unlike GOP strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing.
In his memoir Nixon's White House Wars , Pat
Buchanan writes about how, despite playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was
mostly shut out
of high-level jobs:
Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our movement had exhibited real power
in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and
though we were
playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was
mostly shut out
of high-level jobs:
Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our movement had exhibited real power
in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and
though we were veterans of a victorious presidential campaign, few of us had served in the executive branch. We lacked titles,
resumes, credentials Our pool of experienced public servants who could seamlessly move into top positions was miniscule compared
to that of the liberal Democrats who had dominated the capital's politics since FDR arrived in 1933.
History repeated itself in 2016, when Donald Trump would win the presidency on a nationalist platform but find few qualified individuals
who could reliably implement his agenda.
If nationalists want to ensure that their next generation of leaders is able to effectively implement the policies they run on,
they are going to have to engage in the slow and tedious project of working their way up through powerful institutions.
Bannon may have been and remains an "outsider" to the political Establishment. But nonetheless, throughout his life he has leveraged
elite institutions such as Harvard, Goldman Sachs, the Republican Party, and even Hollywood in order to become financially independent
and free to pursue his political goals.
If enough of those on the Dissident Right forge a similar path, we can be sure that future nationalist political victories will
be less hollow. Jeremy Cooper is a specialist in international politics and an observer of global trends. Follow him at
@NeoNeoLiberal .
@Clyde Wilson
Is there any evidence that Trump even tried to find the right people to fill the offices? Having dabbled ever so slightly
in this process in the spring, my impression is that there is a mechanism run largely by lawyers from the big DC law firms (presumably
one for each party) who are the gatekeepers for applicants. The result of this system, which I have little doubt that the "Trump
Team" did not try to take on (after all, they had only a couple of months to put together the beginnings of a team, and that left
little or no time replacing The Swamp Machine ) is that the key positions throughout the administration are largely filled with
lawyers from connected law firms. After all, who better to administer the government than lawyers!?!?
At any rate, my experience with the process was: on your marks, get set, nothing. 30 years experience in and around federal
government, but not a lawyer. Don't call us, we don't want to talk to you. (I also made clear in my cover letter that the key
motivator for my application -- and first ever political contributions -- was Trump and his agenda. In retrospect, this "admission"
was probably a kiss of death. I was a Trumpite. Eeeewww!!! (I may well not have been qualified for anything, but I'm SURE I was
disqualified by my support for Trump )
In its aftermath, commentators warned of a resurgence of economic nationalism, that is,
protectionism. Some states did increase tariff levels but this has not led to a generalised
increase in barriers to trade in the pursuit of national economies for interrelated reasons:
(1) the integration and therefore interdependency of economies; (2) the complexity of the
global economy, making it all but impossible to separate by nationality; (3) the greater
extensity of world markets compared to the mid-20th century; (4) the redundancy of the various
models of economic nationalism.
Policy Implications
Economic nationalism should be understood as a set of practices to create, bolster and
protect national economies in the context of world markets. The rise and institutionalisation
of economic nationalism in the 20th century was a product of economic crisis, nationalist
movements and enlarged states.
There has been no 'return of economic nationalism' as in a generalised rise in protective
barriers to trade since the financial crash of 2011. Unlike the 1930s, sovereign debt has not
motivated states to withdraw from global markets.
The integration, complexity and extensity of the world's economy mean that a reversal of
trade as great as during the interwar period would entail an economic Armageddon. Whatever
future ructions the world's economy experiences due, above all, to chronic levels of
sovereign debt, policy makers should be mindful of this reality.
Simultaneously, they should be aware that ongoing instability may entail greater economic
nationalism. The key lesson from the period after the Second World War is relevant now at a
more overtly global level: the importance of planning, regulation and respect for models of
economic diversity to further global trade.
"... neocons are not Alt Right. National Socialists are not Alt Right. ..."
"... The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist objectives. ..."
"... The Alt Right is opposed to the rule or domination of any native ethnic group by another, particularly in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples. The Alt Right is opposed to any non-native ethnic group obtaining excessive influence in any society through nepotism, tribalism, or any other means. ..."
"... The Alt Right does not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, people, or sub-species. Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers. ..."
"... The Alt Right is a philosophy that values peace among the various nations of the world and opposes wars to impose the values of one nation upon another ..."
The Alt Right is of the political right in both the American and the European sense of
the term. Socialists are not Alt Right. Progressives are not Alt Right. Liberals are not Alt
Right. Communists, Marxists, Marxians, cultural Marxists, and
neocons are not Alt Right.
National Socialists are not Alt Right.
The Alt Right is an ALTERNATIVE to the mainstream conservative movement in the USA that
is nominally encapsulated by Russel Kirk's
10 Conservative
Principles
, but in reality has devolved towards progressivism. It is also an alternative
to libertarianism.
The Alt Right is not a defensive attitude and rejects the concept of noble and principled
defeat. It is a forward-thinking philosophy of offense, in every sense of that term. The Alt
Right believes in victory through persistence and remaining in harmony with science, reality,
cultural tradition, and the lessons of history.
The Alt Right believes Western civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and
supports its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the European nations, and the
Graeco-Roman legacy.
The Alt Right is openly and avowedly nationalist. It supports all nationalisms and the
right of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and
immigration.
The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals
or globalist objectives.
The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason
it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist
in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.
The Alt Right is scientodific. It presumptively accepts the current conclusions of the
scientific method (scientody), while understanding a) these conclusions are liable to future
revision, b) that scientistry is susceptible to corruption, and c) that the so-called
scientific consensus is not based on scientody, but democracy, and is therefore intrinsically
unscientific.
The Alt Right believes identity > culture > politics.
The Alt Right is opposed to the rule or domination of any native ethnic group by
another, particularly in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples. The Alt Right is
opposed to any non-native ethnic group obtaining excessive influence in any society through
nepotism, tribalism, or any other means.
The Alt Right understands that diversity + proximity = war.
The Alt Right doesn't care what you think of it.
The Alt Right rejects international free trade and the free movement of peoples that free
trade requires. The benefits of intranational free trade is not evidence for the benefits of
international free trade.
The Alt Right believes we must secure the existence of white people and a future for
white children.
The Alt Right does not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, people,
or sub-species. Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species has its own unique
strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native
culture it prefers.
The Alt Right is a philosophy that values peace among the various nations of the
world and opposes wars to impose the values of one nation upon another
as well as
efforts to exterminate individual nations through war, genocide, immigration, or genetic
assimilation.
TL;DR: The Alt Right is a Western ideology that believes in science, history, reality, and
the right of a genetic nation to exist and govern itself in its own interests.
The patron saint of conservatives, Russell Kirk, wrote:
"The great line of demarcation in
modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one
side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women
who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only
needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that
line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant
human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal."
This is no longer true, assuming it ever was. The great line of demarcation in modern
politics is now a division between men and women who believe that they are ultimately defined
by their momentary opinions and those who believe they are ultimately defined by their genetic
heritage. The Alt Right understands that the former will always lose to the latter in the end,
because the former is subject to change.
Rejection of globalization by alt-right is very important. that's why make them economic nationalists.
And that's why they are hated neocon and those forces of neoliberalism which are behind Neocon/Neolib
Cultural Revolution -- promotion of LGBT, uni-gender bathrooms, transsexuals, etc, identity wedge in
politics demonstrated by Hillary, etc. (modeled on Mao's cultural revolution, which also what launched
when Mao started to lose his grip on political power).
In my experience with the alt-right, I encountered a surprisingly common narrative: Alt-right supporters
did not, for the most part, come from overtly racist families. Alt-right media platforms have actually
been pushing this meme aggressively in recent months. Far from defending the ideas and institutions
they inherited, the alt-right!which is overwhelmingly a movement of white millennials!forcefully
condemns their parents' generation. They do so because they do not believe their parents are racist
enough
In an inverse of the left-wing protest movements of the 1960s, the youthful alt-right bitterly
lambast the "boomers" for their lack of explicit ethnocentrism, their rejection of patriarchy, and
their failure to maintain America's old demographic characteristics and racial hierarchy. In the
alt-right's vision, even older conservatives are useless "cucks" who focus on tax policies and forcefully
deny that they are driven by racial animus.
... ... ...
To complicate matters further, many people in the alt-right were radicalized while in college. Not
only that, but the efforts to inoculate the next generation of America's social and economic leaders
against racism were, in some cases, a catalyst for racist radicalization. Although academic seminars
that explain the reality of white privilege may reduce feelings of prejudice among most young whites
exposed to them, they have the opposite effect on other young whites. At this point we do not know
what percentage of white college students react in such a way, but the number is high enough to warrant
additional study.
A final problem with contemporary discussions about racism is that they often remain rooted in
outdated stereotypes. Our popular culture tends to define the racist as a toothless illiterate Klansman
in rural Appalachia, or a bitter, angry urban skinhead reacting to limited social prospects. Thus,
when a white nationalist movement arises that exhibits neither of these characteristics, people are
taken by surprise.
It boggles my mind that the left, who were so effective at dominating the culture wars basically
from the late 60s, cannot see the type of counter-culture they are creating. Your point about
alt-righters opposing their parents drives this home.
People have been left to drift in a sea of postmodernism without an anchor for far too long
now, and they are grasping onto whatever seems sturdy. The alt-right, for its many faults, provides
something compelling and firm to grab.
The left's big failure when all the dust settles will be seen as its inability to provide a
coherent view of human nature and a positive, constructive, unifying message. They are now the
side against everything – against reason, against tradition, against truth, against shared institutions
and heritage and nationalism It's no wonder people are looking to be for something these days.
People are sick of being atomized into smaller and smaller units, fostered by the left's new and
now permanent quest to find new victim groups.
I'm disappointed to read an article at The American Conservative that fails to address the reality
behind these numbers. Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein
white people are depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward
identity politics themselves in not surprising, and it's a bit offensive to attribute this trend
to the eternal mysteries of inexplicable "racist" hate.
The young can see through the fake dynamic being depicted in the mainstream media, and unless
The American Conservative wants to completely lose relevance, a light should be shone on the elephant
in the room. For young white kids, The Culture Wars often present an existential threat, as Colin
Flaherty shows in Don't Make the Black Kids Angry–endorsed and heralded as a troubling and important
work by Thomas Sowell.
From the 16 Points of the Alt-Right:
5. The Alt Right is openly and avowedly nationalist. It supports all nationalisms and the right
of all nations to exist, homogeneous and unadulterated by foreign invasion and immigration.
6. The Alt Right is anti-globalist. It opposes all groups who work for globalist ideals or globalist
objectives.
It is important to remember that nations are people, not geography. The current American Union,
enforced by imperial conquest, is a Multi-National empire. It has been held together by force
and more recently by common, though not equal, material prosperity.
With the imposition of Globalism's exotic perversions and eroding economic prospects the American
Union is heading for the same fate as all Multi-National empires before it.
Mysteriously absent from the scholarly discussion seems to be the pioneer of sociology, Ludwig
Gumplowicz. Incredibly so, as the same factors that led to the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire abound in contemporary America.
I have two teenage sons – we live in Canada – and they tell that, no matter what they say, who
they hang out with, what music they listen to, no matter how many times they demonstrate they
are not racist, they are repeatedly called racist. They are automatically guilty because they
are white. They are beaten over the head with this message in school and in the press and are
sick and tired of it.
What might also be considered is the cultural effect upon a generation which has now matured through
what the government calls "perpetual war," with the concomitant constant celebration of "warriors,"
hyper-patriotism as demanded of all public events such as shown in the fanaticism of baseball
players engaged in "National Anthem standouts," such as were popular a couple years ago in MLB,
the constant references in political campaigns to the "enemy," to include Russia as well now,
and the "stab in the back" legend created to accuse anyone opposed to more war and occupation
of "treason." We've "radicalized" our own youth, with Trump coming along with his links to Israel's
ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli "Right," and created a cultural condition
much like this:
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/04/conservative-revolutionaries-fascism/
Odd, you write "How did the youngest white Americans respond to the most racially polarizing election
in recent memory?" In reality it was less racially polarized than 2012, when 93 % of African Americans
and 71% of Hispanics voted for Obama while in 2016 88% of Blacks and 65% of Hispanics voted from
Hillary. So Trump won a higher percentage of African American votes and Hispanic votes than Mitt
Romney. In 2008 Obama won 95% of Blacks and 67% of Hispanics, in 2004 the numbers were 88 and
53 for Kerry so the three elections between 2004 and and 2016 were all more polarizing than the
2016 race.
Yes, you make many important points, Mr. Hawley, but that you feel the need to join the chorus
of those who see our president's reaction to Charlottesville as somehow inappropriate or even
itself racist–that is sad. I don't see what else you may be implying in your opening paragraphs,
since you move directly from the number of "likes" Obama's bromide received to this: "[Obama's
reaction] also offered a stark contrast to that of President Trump."
In spite of many liberals' frantic desire to read whatever they want into President Trump's
words, he very clearly condemned the neo-Nazis and the evil of Heather Heyer's murderer. That
he also condemned the violence coming from Antifa ranks does not lessen his condemnation
of that coming from the alt right side. Rather, condemning the rising illiberalism on both sides
of this growing conflict was both commendable and necessary.
Many Americans see these recent events in a context stretching back years. Myself, at fifty,
having watched especially the steady empowerment of a demagogic left on our campuses, I'm not
much surprised that a racist "white nationalist" movement should burst into flame at just this
point. The kindling is right there in the anti-white, misandrous virulence of our SJW left.
Sane conservatives have strongly condemned the new alt-right racism. The problem is that we
are not seeing anything similar from the left. Our left seems incapable of condemning, let alone
even seeing , its own racist excesses. Which are everywhere in its discourse, especially
in our humanities departments.
I would say that in the recent decades the American left has grown much more deeply invested
in identity politics than the right has ever been during my lifetime. In my view, our left has
grown more enamored of identity issues precisely because it has abandoned the bread and butter
issues that really matter to most Americans.
I have many left-liberal friends and regularly read the left press. Surveying the reactions
to Charlottesville and the rising conflict between alt-right extremists and a radicalized Antifa
left, I see nowhere a step toward acknowledging the obvious: our rabid identity politics is by
no means just a problem of the right.
Racial identity politics is a curse. Sadly, it seems we've been cursed by it well and and good.
The poison's reaching down to the bone. Unless both smart moderates and people on the left start
to recognize just how badly poisoned our left has been by this curse, no progress will be made.
Identity politics needs to be condemned on both sides of this growing national street brawl,
and it should start NOW.
But I'm afraid it's not going to happen. I see my friends on the left, and they're nowhere
near acknowledging the problem. And I'm sad to see our president's attempt to call out both sides
has gotten such negative reactions. I'm afraid this isn't going to end well.
Liberal identity politics creates an inherently adversarial arena, wherein white people are
depicted as the enemy. That young whites should respond by gravitating toward identity politics
themselves in not surprising
One of many good reasons for rejecting "identity" politics generally.
A white friend attended a Cal State graduate program for counseling a couple of years ago; he
left very bitter after all his classes told him that white men were the proximate cause of the
world's misery. Then a mutual Latina friend from church invited him to coffee and told him that
he was the white devil, the cause of her oppression. You can conclude how he felt.
The liberal universities' curricula has caused a storm of madness; they have unleashed their
own form of oppressive thought on a significant portion on American society:white men. There is
now an adverse reaction. Of course, even more opprobrium will be heaped upon on men who might
question the illogicality of feminism and the left. How can all of this end well if the humanity
of white men is denied in universities, public schools and universities?
The Alt Right simply believes that Western nations have a right to preserve their culture and
heritage. Every normal man in these United States agreed with that premise prior to the Marxist
takeover of our institutions in the 1960's. And you know it's true.
Maybe at the bottom of it is not racism as in they are the wrong colour, but about cultural traits
and patterns of behaviour that are stirring resentment. Plus maybe the inclusion towards more
social benefits not available before (Obamacare?).
The current rap music, as opposed to the initial one, that emphasized social injustice is such
that one feels emptying his own stomach like sharks do.
The macho culture that black gangs, latin american gangs manifest is a bit antagonistic to
white supremacists gangs and attitudes towards women. After all, vikings going raiding used to
have shield maidens joining, and Celtic culture is full of women warriors. Northern European culture,
harking back to pre-Christian times was more kinder to women than what women from southern Europe
(Greece, Rome) experienced (total ownership by husbands, the veil, etc., all imported from the
Middle East: but one must not judge too harshly, the book "Debt, the first 5000 years" could be
an eye opener of the root causes of such attitudes).
Also, the lack of respect for human life expressed in these cultures is not that palatable,
even for white supremacists (while one can point to Nazi Germany as an outlier – but there it
was the state that promoted such attitudes, while in Japan the foreigner that is persecuted and
ostracized could be the refugee from another village around Fukushima – see the Economist on that).
So I think there are many avenues to explore in identifying the rise in Alt right and white
supremacists in the U.S. But colour is definitely not it.
Come now. There were the same types around me years ago at school, work, society. They just did
not march around like Nazis in public, probably because the Greatest Generation would have kicked
their butts.
Now, with the miracle of modern technology, a few hundred of them can get together and raise
hell in one place. Plus they now get lots of encouraging internet press (and some discouraging).
This article says virtually nothing.
The author fails to define his terms, beginning with Alt-Right.
And he seems to operate from a dislike of Trump underneath it all. This dislike is common among
pundits, left and right, who consider themselves to be refined and cultured. So it was that the
NYT's early condemnation of Trump led with complaints about his bearing and manners – "vulgar"
was the word often used if memory serves.
This gets us nowhere. Many in the US are disturbed by the decline in their prospects with a decrease
in share of wages in the national income ongoing since the 1970's – before Reagan who is blamed
for it all. Add to that the 16 years of wars which have taken the lives of Trump supporters disproportionately
and you have a real basis for grievances.
Racism seems to be a side show as does AntiFa.
"The accusation of being racist because you are white is a misunderstanding of structural racism."
I agree, but I notice that Jews have the same misunderstanding when you mention structural
"Zionist Occupied Government" or "Jewish Privilege".
Perhaps because they are both conspiracy theories rooted in hatred and ignorance, which is
where we descend when the concept of a statistical distribution or empirical data become "controversial",
or "feelings" overtake "facts".
And progressives still refer to KKK when they seek an example of a white supremacist group. Amazing.
They are too lazy even to learn that the Klan lost its relevance long ago, and the most powerful
white supremacist organization of today consists of entirely different people, who are very far
from being illiterate.
***
Todd Pierce,
Israel's ultra militarist, Benjamin Netanyahu
I won't deny that Bibi is a controversial figure, but calling him an ultra militarist is quite
a bit of a stretch.
Elite sports. After reading this article and it's underlying thesis, it occurs to me that the
way sports have evolved in this country is very likely to be the experience that millennial whites
have had that fosters their "out group" belief systems. It is very common, using soccer as my
frame of reference, for wealthy suburban families to spend a fortune getting their children all
the best training and access to all the best clubs. Their children are usually the best players
in their community of origin and usually the top players all the way through the preadolescent
years only to find all of that money and prestige gone to waste once their kids get to around
sixteen at which point their children are invariably replaced on the roster by a recent immigrant -- mainly from Africa or south of our border and usually at a cut rate compared to the one they
are bleeding the suburban families with. I'm assuming this is becoming more common across all
sports as they move toward a pay to play corporate model. In soccer, the white kids are, seriously,
the paying customers who fill out the roster that supports the truly talented kids (from countries
who know how to develop soccer talent.)
The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors
show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all. You can
see that now. So what it comes down to are white people going to give away their country? Until
blacks become cooperative and productive things need to stay as they are. Sad maybe but that's
just the way it has to be.
There have always been fringe, rightwing groups in the US. Nothing new there. But the so-called
alt-right, comprised of Nazi wannabes and assorted peckerwoods, is truly the spawn of the looney
left, whose obsession with race has created the toxic environment we find ourselves in.
"... Bannon openly acknowledged his animus for the "Party of Davos" editorial positions of The Economist ..."
"... For Mr Bannon, who went from a working-class Virginian family to careers in Wall Street and Hollywood, those agreements epitomised the folly of globalisation, which he considers disastrous for American workers and avoidable. He hardened this critique after returning to America from a spell in Hong Kong; China, whose gaming of WTO rules Mr Bannon considers tantamount to an "economic war" against America, remains at the heart of it. ..."
"... When some of Mr Bannon's early schemes failed -- including the shabbily planned travel ban, now snarled up in the courts -- Mr Trump turned increasingly to his more conventional advisers, including Mr Kushner and Mr McMaster. ..."
President Trump's former chief strategist and current Breitbart
News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon invited the editors of
The Economist
to his
home for a candid discussion about the future of the populist economic nationalist movement and
the civilizational challenges that will pit "the Judeo-Christian liberal West" against
globalist "mercantilist" forces from China to Silicon Valley.
Bannon openly acknowledged his animus for the "Party of Davos" editorial positions of
The Economist
, referring to them as "the enemy" of economic nationalism for their
"radical" obsession with free trade at all costs.
He also affirmed his loyalty to Trump and his desire to help him. Breitbart "will never turn
on [Trump]," Bannon said, "But we are never going to let him take a decision that hurts
him."
Bannon acknowledged that in the White House he had "influence," but outside at Breitbart he
has "power." He said he intends to use that power to "rally the base" and "have [Trump's] back.
The harder he pushes, the more we will be there for him."
The discussion soon turned to what Bannon sees as the inevitable civilizational struggle
between the Judeo-Christian classical liberalism of the West -- which affirms human rights,
freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and self-governance -- versus the "mercantilist,
Confucian system" of an ascendant China.
Among the particular opponents he has in his sights, said Mr Bannon, seated in a
dining-room decorated with Christian iconography and political mementos, are congressional
Republicans ("Mitch McConnell, I'm going to light him up"), China ("Let's go screw up One
Belt One Road") and "the elites in Silicon Valley and Wall Street -- they're a bunch of
globalists who have forgotten their fellow Americans." Despite his departure -- voluntarily, he
insists, though his resignation is reported to have been demanded of him -- Mr Bannon says he
will never attack his former boss. Yet Breitbart will caution Mr Trump to stick to the
populist nationalist course Mr Bannon charted. "We will never turn on him. But we are never
going to let him take a decision that hurts him." The website offered an early taste of this
in its disparaging coverage of Mr Trump's "flip-flop" decision to send more American troops
to Afghanistan, which was announced on August 21st and Mr Bannon strongly opposes (see
article
).
As Mr Trump's campaign chief (his third in two months, the campaign having been roiled by
scandals) Mr Bannon urged him to redouble that effort [to campaign on as a populist economic
nationalist taking on the politically correct establishment]. "The American people understood
his foibles and understood his character flaws and they didn't care," he says. "The country
was thirsting for change and [Barack] Obama didn't give them enough. I said, we are going for
a nationalist message, we are going to go barbarian, and we will win."
For Mr Bannon, who went from a working-class Virginian family to careers in Wall Street
and Hollywood, those agreements epitomised the folly of globalisation, which he considers
disastrous for American workers and avoidable. He hardened this critique after returning to
America from a spell in Hong Kong; China, whose gaming of WTO rules Mr Bannon considers
tantamount to an "economic war" against America, remains at the heart of it.
A zealous
Catholic who believes in the inevitability of civilizational conflict, he considers China's
growth to be an additional, overarching threat to America, which it must therefore dial back.
"I want the world to look back in 100 years and say, their mercantilist, Confucian system
lost. The Judeo-Christian liberal West won."
The president has, if not fixed intellectual differences with Mr Bannon, different
predilections, including his slavish regard for the military and business elites now stocking
his cabinet, whom his former adviser derides. ("What did the elites do?" asks Mr Bannon.
"These are the guys who gave us happy talk on Iraq, who let China into the WTO and said it
would sign up to the rules-based order.")
When some of Mr Bannon's early schemes
failed -- including the shabbily planned travel ban, now snarled up in the courts -- Mr Trump
turned increasingly to his more conventional advisers, including Mr Kushner and Mr McMaster.
On trade and security in particular, they have edged him towards the mainstream. Whereas Mr
Bannon urged the president to withdraw from NAFTA and Afghanistan, for example, he has
launched a modest-looking review of the former and will send more troops to the latter.
Increasingly isolated, Mr Bannon's departure from the White House was predicted.
'I'm not going to breathe the same air as
that terrorist'
Bannon boycotted Trump meet with 'terrorist' Abbas --
report
Days after his ouster from the White House, the extent of the animosity
between divisive strategist Steve Bannon and the president's son-in-law
Jared Kushner is steadily emerging in US media reports, with an article in
Vanity Fair detailing their disputes and asserting that Bannon is now
planning his "revenge."
Bannon, a hero of the so-called "alt right" whose presence in the West
Wing was controversial from the start, had become the nucleus of one of
several competing power centers in a chaotic White House. During his
six-month tenure as Trump's chief strategist, Bannon and Kushner reportedly
clashed on numerous policy issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
... ... ...
Hours after he was fired, Bannon
returned to his previous job as editor of the ultra-conservative
Breitbart News, where he declared war on Ivanka, Kushner and
fellow "globalist" Gary Cohn.
The Vanity Fair article was headlined:
"Steve Bannon readies his revenge: The war on Jared Kushner is
about to go nuclear."
... ... ...
"Jared and Ivanka helped push him out. They were concerned about how they
were being viewed by the Jewish community," The Mail reported on Sunday.
Jossef Perl
·
Nahariyah, Hazafon, Israel
Yes, this time it is Tamar
Pileggi who gives us Time of Israel's typical Trump's
blasting story quoting "Vanity Fair detailing their (i.e.
Kushner vs. Bannon) disputes and asserting that Bannon is
now planning his 'revenge."" If it comes from Vanity Fair
that Bannon is planning a revenge (albeit without a single
named source) it must be true right? But this is what the
US fake news media has decended to, while the Israeli fake
news media goes one step lower, just quoting the US fake
media. Any 7 years old can see the that intent here
continues to be to creat an impression that the Trump
white is out of control and everything around Trum is
falling apart. How can this kind of media continue to
think the public believes a word from them? Tamar Pileggi,
if all you do is quoting Vanity Fair, which is typical to
the rest of the staff at TOI, why don't you all just
include a link to the original articles in your TOI
webpage? Who need all of you filling your paper by quoting
other publications without any due diligence? How can you
call yourselves journalists when all you do is cut and
paste?
Audrey Travis
·
Works at
Music Teacher - Retired
Perhaps, but 90% of
the world knows nothing about the
extreme violence of the ultra left
Antifa and the fact the y brought and
used weapons in Charlottesville. What
Trump should have done was be explicit
in the detailsof why he was condemning
both side. His broadsided condemnation
of both sides was the problem.
Albert Reingewirtz
·
Works at
Happily Retired
He did not do any
equivalence between two despicable gangs
of mobsters. He talked about BOTH of
their VIOLENCE. You listen too much to
propaganda. The more they repeat the
more people believe their lies.
Steve Klein
·
Works at
Self-Employed
Albert Reingewirtz,
do you believe there were "some very
fine" people marching with the Nazis in
Charlottesville?
Like
·
Reply
·
2
·
Aug 21, 2017 5:17am
Steve Klein
·
Works at
Self-Employed
'Bannon: Mahmoud Abbas is a terrorist,
I'd never meet with him'
Ousted WH strategist Steve Bannon reportedly lobbied hard
for Jerusalem embassy move, tougher line against PA - but
was opposed by Kushner.
David Rosenberg, 21/08/17 11:23 (Israel National News)
"... The "West Wing Democrats" in the White House are eager to sacrifice President Donald Trump's top campaign promise in exchange for Democratic approval of the tax cuts sought by wealthy donors and business interests, according to an article in Politico. In an August 23 article about Trump's push to get funding for an extended border wall, Politico described the lack of support for the wall among his business-affiliated aides: Few staff members in the West Wing are as concerned about it [as the President], senior administration officials said. Some in the White House have urged Trump not to focus as much on the wall, try to pass a clean debt-ceiling bill and move to tax reform. "You have barely anyone here saying, 'Wall, wall, we have to get the wall at all costs,'" one White House official said. Two people who have spoken to Trump said he sees not building the wall as a personal embarrassment -- and that he has shown more interest in building the wall than in other issues, like the upcoming budget negotiations. "You don't want a government shutdown," the White House official said. "He is told that. He says, 'I want money for the wall.'" The same emphasis on tax cuts for the elite before immigration reform for voters was also cited by Axios on August 20, in an article which claimed to explain why top staff chose to stay in the White House amid elite hatred of his populist, wage-boosting, pro-American priorities. Axios reported : We talked to a half dozen senior administration officials, who range from dismayed but certain to stay, to disgusted and likely soon to leave. They all work closely with Trump and his senior team so, of course, wouldn't talk on the record. Instead, they agreed to let us distill their thinking/rationale: "You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill": The most common response centers on the urgent importance of having smart, sane people around Trump to fight his worst impulses. If they weren't there, they say, we would have a trade war with China, massive deportations, and a government shutdown to force construction of a Southern wall. "General Mattis needs us": Many talk about their reluctance to bolt on their friends and colleagues who are fighting the good fight to force better Trump behavior/decisions. They rightly point out that together, they have learned how to ignore Trump's rhetoric and, at times, collectively steer him to more conventional policy responses. This situation leaves Trump dependent on a few aides -- such as immigration reformer Steve Miller -- and his supporters at his rallies to help fend off the insistent demands by his globalist aides for a back-room surrender of his presidential goals. ..."
"... the pro-American immigration reformers who backed Trump in the election fear his globalist aides will push Trump to accept and establish former President Barack Obama's DACA amnesty in exchange for minor concessions, such as a modest amount of funds to build a short distance of border wall. ..."
The "West Wing Democrats" in the White House are eager to sacrifice President Donald Trump's
top campaign promise in exchange for Democratic approval of the tax cuts sought by wealthy donors
and business interests, according to an article in Politico.
In an August 23 article about Trump's push to get funding for an extended border wall, Politico
described the lack of support for the wall among his business-affiliated aides:
Few staff members in the West Wing are as concerned about it [as the President], senior administration
officials said.
Some in the White House have urged Trump not to focus as much on the wall, try to pass a clean
debt-ceiling bill and move to tax reform. "You have barely anyone here saying, 'Wall, wall, we
have to get the wall at all costs,'" one White House official said.
Two people who have spoken to Trump said he sees not building the wall as a personal embarrassment
-- and that he has shown more interest in building the wall than in other issues, like the
upcoming budget negotiations. "You don't want a government shutdown," the White House official
said. "He is told that. He says, 'I want money for the wall.'"
The same emphasis on tax cuts for the elite before immigration reform for voters was also cited
by Axios on August 20, in an article which claimed to explain why top staff chose to stay in the
White House amid elite hatred of his populist, wage-boosting, pro-American priorities. Axios
reported :
We talked to a half dozen senior administration officials, who range from dismayed but certain
to stay, to disgusted and likely soon to leave. They all work closely with Trump and his senior
team so, of course, wouldn't talk on the record. Instead, they agreed to let us distill their
thinking/rationale:
"You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill": The most common response centers on the urgent
importance of having smart, sane people around Trump to fight his worst impulses. If they weren't
there, they say, we would have a trade war with China, massive deportations, and a government
shutdown to force construction of a Southern wall.
"General Mattis needs us": Many talk about their reluctance to bolt on their friends and colleagues
who are fighting the good fight to force better Trump behavior/decisions. They rightly point out
that together, they have learned how to ignore Trump's rhetoric and, at times, collectively steer
him to more conventional policy responses.
This situation leaves Trump dependent on a few aides -- such as immigration reformer
Steve Miller -- and his supporters at his rallies to help fend off the insistent demands
by his globalist aides for a back-room surrender of his presidential goals.
That surrender would help his aides win Democratic support for their goals -- but
it would leave Trump with few friends heading into the 2018 midterm elections and the crucial 2020
reelection, says D.C. insiders. For example, the pro-American immigration reformers who backed
Trump in the election fear his
globalist aides will push Trump to accept and establish former President Barack Obama's DACA
amnesty in exchange for minor concessions, such as a modest amount of funds to build a short distance
of border wall.
"If [Trump's aides] are left to their own devices, they would exchange this for a few trinkets,"
so violating Trump's campaign promise before the 2018 and 2020 elections, said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman
for FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
The suggested deal was outlined in a Tuesday
article by Anita Kumar, a reporter for the McClatchy news service. She uses the Democrats' term
-- 'dreamers' – to describe the 800,000 DACA illegals as she wrote:
White House officials want Trump to strike an ambitious deal with Congress that offers Dreamers
protection in exchange for legislation that pays for a border wall and more detention facilities,
curbs legal immigration and implements E-verify, an online system that allows businesses to
check immigration status, according to a half-dozen people familiar with situation, most involved
with the negotiations.
The group includes former and current White House chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and
John Kelly , the president's daughter,
Ivanka Trump , and her husband,
Jared Kushner , who both serve as presidential advisers, they said. Others who have not been
as vocal publicly about their stance but are thought to agree include Vice President
Mike Pence , who as a congressman worked on a failed immigration deal that called for citizenship,
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, a Democrat who serves as director of the
National Economic Council.
There is no evidence that Democrats will accept that ambitious deal before the 2018 election,
and much evidence that Trump's aides will quickly give up wall funding and the popular RAISE Act
to win Democratic support for tax cuts. So far, top Democrats have responded that they would
not offer anything as they demand a permanent DACA amnesty.
However, Trump's determination to resist his aides is likely boosted by the cheering he gets at
rallies when he promises to build the wall.
"We are building a wall on the southern border, which is absolutely necessary," he told roughly
30,000 cheering supporters at an August 22 rally in Phoenix, Ariz. "The obstructionist Democrats
would like us not to do it, believe me, [but] if we have to close down our government, we are building
that wall We're going to have our wall. We're going to get our wall."
There you have it, @realDonaldTrump
-- Your own 30k focus-group. LIKE: deportations, a wall, jobs; DON'T LIKE: Media,
Afghan War & tax cuts.
Read the Axios article
here , and the Politico article
here .
Under current immigration policy, the federal government accepts 1 million legal immigrants each
year, even though 4 million young Americans enter the workforce to look for decent jobs. Each year,
the government also hands out
almost 3 million short-term work permits to foreign workers. These permits include
roughly 330,000 one-year OPT permits for foreign graduates of U.S. colleges, roughly
200,000 three-year H-1B visas for foreign white-collar professionals, and 400,000 two-year permits
to DACA illegals.
Many
polls show that Americans are very generous, they do welcome individual immigrants, and they
do want to like the idea of immigration. But the polls also show that most Americans
are increasingly worried that large-scale legal immigration will
change their country and disadvantage themselves and their children. Trump's "Buy American, Hire
American" policies are also
extremely popular , including among Democratic-leaning voters.
The country is better off with him out of the West Wing, but now Trump has to step up.
After departing his post as White House chief strategist last week, Steve Bannon told the Weekly Standard that "the Trump presidency
that we fought for, and won, is over." The clear suggestion is that Mr. Trump's chance at success had followed Mr. Bannon out the
door.
Trying to recast his ouster as a personal choice, Mr. Bannon bragged "I can fight better on the outside." He promised "to crush
the opposition," saying "I built a f! machine at Breitbart."
The former adviser also told a Bloomberg reporter he would be "going to war for Trump against his opponents!on Capitol Hill, in
the media, and in corporate America."...
"... Stephen Bannon may have been a political adviser to President Donald Trump, but his firing Friday could have an impact on U.S. foreign policy from Europe to the Middle East and Asia. Bannon's exit clears an obstacle for backers of an active U.S. foreign policy in line with recent presidencies -- and is a resounding win for Bannon's internal rival, national security adviser H.R. McMaster. ..."
"... More generally, it will remove an internal brake on U.S. military action abroad. Bannon has argued greater U.S. intervention in Iraq and Syria and was among the few White House officials to oppose President Donald Trump's early-April missile strike in Syria. ..."
"... Tonight if Trump order more troops to Afghanistan, he'd put the last and hardest nail on his own coffin. I do not understand, how long Americans will let the Deep State win, making them sacrificial animals at the mercy of a perpetual power. ..."
His exit is a win for backers of a more traditional -- and interventionist -- U.S. foreign policy.
Stephen Bannon may have been a political adviser to President Donald Trump,
but his firing Friday could have an impact on U.S. foreign policy from Europe to the Middle East
and Asia. Bannon's exit clears an obstacle for backers of an active U.S. foreign policy in line with recent
presidencies -- and is a resounding win for Bannon's internal rival, national security adviser H.R.
McMaster.
Bannon was a regular participant in national security debates, often as an opponent of military
action and a harsh critic of international bodies like the United Nations and the European Union.
He has also been a withering critic of diplomatic, military and intelligence professionals -- "globalists"
he says have repeatedly shown bad judgment, particularly when it comes to U.S. military interventions
abroad. That put him at loggerheads with Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, as well as McMaster.
"If you look at the balance of power of isolationists versus internationalists in the White House
now, it seems safe to say that the pendulum has swung towards the internationalists," said Danielle
Pletka, senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Though Bannon has not described himself as an "isolationist," he has proudly adopted Trump's "America
First" motto, which he says argues for spending less blood and treasure overseas for anything less
than America's most vital interests.
He has also alarmed European leaders with his criticism of the E.U. and his expressed support
for some European nationalist movements. Bannon actively backed Great Britain's 2016 "Brexit" from
the E.U. and introduced Trump to its chief political advocate, the populist British politician Nigel
Farage.
"Our European allies are happy about Bannon's departure," said Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow
with the Atlantic Council.
In the immediate term, foreign policy insiders agreed, Bannon's departure also could increase
the chances of a U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan -- a plan championed by McMaster but strongly opposed
by Bannon, who managed to draw out debate on the issue with direct appeals to Trump.
More generally, it will remove an internal brake on U.S. military action abroad. Bannon has argued
greater U.S. intervention in Iraq and Syria and was among the few White House officials to oppose
President Donald Trump's early-April missile strike in Syria.
Bannon is not totally conflict averse: He calls for a far stronger U.S. posture against China
and has warned that war with Beijing could be inevitable. But he pressed Trump to take economic,
not military action against Beijing.
And on Wednesday, Bannon told the American Prospect magazine that there is "no military solution"
to Trump's standoff with North Korea -- undermining the president's recent military threats against
that country, and echoing China's view of the situation.
Beyond the policy realm, Bannon's exit is a clear victory for national security adviser H.R. McMaster,
who at times seemed to be in zero-sum struggle with the Trump adviser for power and influence in
the White House.
Foreign policy veterans were startled when, in early February, Trump designated Bannon as a member
of the National Security Council's elite principals committee -- calling it unprecedented for a White
House political adviser to have a reserved seat at the table for life-and-death debates.
McMaster stripped Bannon of his official NSC position in April, after succeeding the ousted Michael
Flynn -- a Bannon ally -- as national security adviser. Bannon continued to attend NSC meetings and debates
about foreign policy in the Oval Office. But Bannon resented McMaster for demoting him, and for purging
several Flynn allies from the NSC.
Bannon and McMaster also sharply differed on how Trump should discuss terrorist groups like ISIS
and al Qaeda. Bannon favors using the phrase "radical Islamic extremism," but McMaster has largely
prevented Trump from saying it in public on the grounds that it could alienate moderate Muslims who
hear it as an attack on their religion.
McMaster's defenders have accused Bannon of spearheading a campaign of leaks meant to undermine
the top national security aide.
"The campaign to get him out was clearly coming from Bannon or his allies," said Brian McKeon,
a former NSC chief of staff and senior Pentagon policy official in the Obama administration. "The
national security adviser's job is hard enough without having to always look over your shoulder to
see who's trying to knife you.
"This will make McMaster's days a little easier," he added.
No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media
Likely to share McMaster's satisfaction at Bannon's ouster is Tillerson, who chafed at Bannon's
role in State Department personnel decisions. Speaking to the American Prospect this week, Bannon
boasted that he was working to remove Tillerson's top official for China and East Asia.
"I'm getting Susan Thornton out at State," Bannon said in the interview.
In a pointed show of support the next morning, Tillerson shook Thornton's hand in front of television
cameras.
And when Tillerson recommended in February that Trump nominate former Reagan and George W. Bush
administration official Elliott Abrams to be his deputy, Bannon intervened to block the choice, according
to Abrams.
"Bannon's departure probably means a return to normalcy, where the State and Defense Departments
will have greater influence on foreign policy," Abrams said.
Bannon also told the Prospect that he was "changing out people" on the Pentagon's China desk.
Mattis, too, has had personnel disputes with the White House.
"Anything that Tillerson and Mattis really push for will now have a better chance of winning out
-- for
better and for worse," Abrams added.
Abrams and others said that Bannon's exit makes it more likely that McMaster and Mattis will convince
Trump to send more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the subject of a meeting among Trump and his national
security team at Camp David today.
Some sources downplayed the significance of Bannon's departure, however -- noting that, on military
and diplomatic issues, Bannon was more dissenter than policy maker.
Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to former President Barack Obama, said Bannon's
main contributions was his backing for Trump's early executive orders restricting travel from several
Muslim-majority countries. Bannon was also a defender of his friend and ally Sebastian Gorka, a controversial
White House adviser who often appears on television.
"On national security, it was hard to see Bannon's influence anywhere other than the Muslim ban
and Gorka doing cable hits, so I don't think it changes that much," Rhodes said, adding: "It does
suggest a greater likelihood of a troop increase in Afghanistan."
And several sources cautioned that while Bannon may not longer occupy the White House, his worldview
is still frequently reflected in the words of the most powerful policymaker of all: President Trump.
European allies "will not be popping champagne corks because their main source of worry remains
in the White House, Donald Trump," Benitez said. "Most Europeans blame Trump personally rather than
Bannon or other subordinates for damaging transatlantic relations."
"The president gets the last vote," McKeon added. "And he has a different approach to foreign
policy than all his predecessors."
As long as there is disagreement there is hope for compromise and moderation. If everyone in the
Executive branch were in agreement, there would be no hope for moderation..
Our 'dear' leaders are NOT in control.
North Korea ia a distraction as is Trump. Examine the military buildup by Nsto against Russia. Time for Germany, Russia and China to work together militarily for harmony/peace in our world.
330 million people and a bunch of nutbars in charge of the place, very few of whom have ever had
a vote cast for them in any election, Trump being the exception. Some guy like Bannon sits around
formulating a wanker worldview and somehow gains power for seven months. I don't suppose the EU
gives a tinker's damn that he dislikes it, it's none of his business. Fulminating on it just exposes
his acceptance of Imperial America, muttering threats because in his blinkered mind that's not
the way the US would have organized Europe - I am unaware that anyone with a brain regards Bannon
as an intellectual, merely a weirdo. Then you have all these generals running around thinking
they're political geniuses or something, all unelected bozos with little exposure to real life.
Giving and taking orders and salutes all around, living a regimented life - just the thing for
running the civilian part of the USA.
Why is it that in the US you vote for dogcatchers, sheriffs and judges which no other country
bothers with, yet all these high cabinet posts are filled from unelected dorks out there who somehow
got noticed, picked by the president, nominated and agreed to by the Senate? The argument has
been, well because they're specialists. So what - they're not responsible to the electorate in
any direct manner. There's a fat chance that they are managerial competents if they are from the
military, a big chance they have developed some warped theory about the world, and few of them
are in the slightest bit interested in domestic politics as it relates to the average citizen.
50% of the budget goes to running the armed forces, by nature always measuring foreign "threats"
as if diplomacy was a competition or something. The business types picked as cabinet secretaries
are invariably from the big business side of the ledger and find foreigners annoying when they
don't hand over their natural resources for next to nothing royalties, leading to the government
bashing these foreigners over the head until they put someone in charge who sees the "light" and
becomes a US ally.
It's a formula for bad government for the domestic population from beginning to end. So up
ramps the patriotism to make the people keep the faith which many are happy to do, and then they
crap all over the way other countries are organized, their food, customs and "only in America
can a hobo be elected President" and there's no opportunity anywhere but in the USA memes. Mesmerized
by their own propaganda into thinking the US is the best there is. Cough.
Tonight if Trump order more troops to Afghanistan, he'd put the last and hardest nail on his own
coffin.
I do not understand, how long Americans will let the Deep State win, making them sacrificial
animals at the mercy of a perpetual power.
Buchanan demonstrates very superficial understanding of the result of the USSR collapse.
Afghan war was just one contributing factor. It was never the primary reason. Soviet
people understood pretty well that they actually faced the USA in Afghan war. Or more
correctly the combination of the USA has technological superiority, Saudi money and
political Islam. The fact that the USA supplied Stingers portable anti-aircraft rocket launchers.
Which later will shoot down some US helicopters. The fact the the USA fe-factor put
political Islam on front burner later will bite the USA several times.
Also Buchanan does not understand the role of neoliberal revolution (or coup d'état if you
wish, called quite coup) of 80th in the current US troubles. Trump was the first ever presidential
candidate, who companied and managed to win the elections on promises to tame neoliberal
globalization. The fact that he was crushed in six month of so is not surprising, as he
faced very well organize Trotskyite militants (aka deep state) - neoliberalism is actually
Trotskyism for rish. Russiagate witch hunt with its Special Prosecutor is a replica of
Stalin processes. As Marx used to say history repeats, first as tragedy, second as farce.
"I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the
British Empire," said Winston Churchill. and this is the essence of Trump betrual of his
election promises.
Notable quotes:
"... Is it now the turn of the Americans? Persuaded by his generals -- Mattis at Defense, McMasters on the National Security Council, Kelly as chief of staff -- President Trump is sending some 4,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan to augment the 8,500 already there. Like Presidents Obama and Bush, he does not intend to preside over a U.S. defeat in its longest war. Nor do his generals. Yet how can we defeat the Taliban with 13,000 troops when we failed to do so with the 100,000 Obama sent? The new troops are to train the Afghan army to take over the war, to continue eradicating the terrorist elements like ISIS, and to prevent Kabul and other cities from falling to a Taliban now dominant in 40 percent of the country. ..."
"... Writes Bob Merry in the fall issue of The National interest: "War between Russia and the West seems nearly inevitable. No self-respecting nation facing inexorable encirclement by an alliance of hostile neighbors can allow such pressures and forces to continue indefinitely. Eventually (Russia) must protect its interests through military action." ..."
"... Trump himself seems hell-bent on tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran. This would lead inexorably to a U.S. ultimatum, where Iran would be expected to back down or face a war that would set the Persian Gulf ablaze. ..."
"... Yet the country did not vote for confrontation or war. ..."
"... America voted for Trump's promise to improve ties with Russia, to make Europe shoulder more of the cost of its defense, to annihilate ISIS and extricate us from Mideast wars, to stay out of future wars. ..."
"... This agenda did exist and Trump used it to get elected. Once he pulled off that trick he tried to get together again (unsuccessfully) with his New York Plutocrat friends. It's that New York social background. It's always been difficult to see Trump fit together economically or socially with the America that elected him, and after he got elected he quickly weakened his ties with Middle America. So why should he complain about Fake News since he got elected on a Fake Agenda? ..."
"... Trump does not even remember what he was elected to do. A man who was determined to drain the swamp is deep, up to his neck, in that swamp. The neocons and the never-Trumpers are the main decision makers in the Trump administration. All the loyal supporters have been chased out of the Trump's inner circle. A man who built his empire with his brain and shrewdness can't seem to handle the Presidency. He is trying to appease the very same people who opposed him in the election. ..."
"... For a smart businessman, Donald Trump can't seem to make any friends. There is a very simple solution to these wars of choice. Mr. Trump swallow your pride and bring the boys home. You will save American lives and will also earn the gratitude of the families of these soldiers. You may even bring peace to many countries around the world and people who have been displaced by these wars can return home. You may even solve the refugee problem in the process. You might even save your presidency. Give peace a chance. ..."
"... I think The Donald offered the lame excuse that things looks much different when you're in the oval office vs. the campaign trail. That won't be any consolation to people who voted for him in the hopes that their family members in the military would be coming home soon. And it won't be any consolation to some members of his base. ..."
"... Trump isn't going to keep his campaign promises. ..."
"... Continuing to maintain forces in South Korea continues to contribute to our bankruptcy. ..."
"... Now that the generals have gone wild under Trump we may as well admit that we're ruled by a military junta. We'll let them make all the decisions since they're so brilliant while Trump tweets and holds stupid rallies trying to convince people that he hasn't reneged on any campaign promises. ..."
"I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the
British Empire," said Winston Churchill to cheers at the Lord Mayor's luncheon in London in
November 1942. True to his word, the great man did not begin the liquidation. When his countrymen threw him out in July 1945, that role fell to Clement Attlee, who began
the liquidation. Churchill, during his second premiership from 1951-1955, would continue the
process, as would his successor, Harold Macmillan, until the greatest empire the world had ever
seen had vanished.
While its demise was inevitable, the death of the empire was hastened and made mo re
humiliating by the wars into which Churchill had helped to plunge Britain, wars that bled and
bankrupted his nation. At Yalta in 1945, Stalin and FDR treated the old imperialist with something approaching
bemused contempt. War is the health of the state, but the death of empires. The German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires all fell in World War I. World War
II ended the Japanese and Italian empires -- with the British and French following soon after.
The Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989. Afghanistan delivered the coup de grace.
Is it now the turn of the Americans? Persuaded by his generals -- Mattis at Defense, McMasters on the National Security Council,
Kelly as chief of staff -- President Trump is sending some 4,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan
to augment the 8,500 already there. Like Presidents Obama and Bush, he does not intend to preside over a U.S. defeat in its
longest war. Nor do his generals. Yet how can we defeat the Taliban with 13,000 troops when we
failed to do so with the 100,000 Obama sent? The new troops are to train the Afghan army to take over the war, to continue eradicating
the terrorist elements like ISIS, and to prevent Kabul and other cities from falling to a
Taliban now dominant in 40 percent of the country.
Yet what did the great general, whom Trump so admires, Douglas MacArthur, say of such a
strategy? "War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision." Is not "prolonged indecision" what the Trump strategy promises? Is not "prolonged
indecision" what the war policies of Obama and Bush produced in the last 17 years? Understandably, Americans feel they cannot walk away from this war. For there is the
certainty as to what will follow when we leave.
When the British left Delhi in 1947, millions of former subjects died during the partition
of the territory into Pakistan and India and the mutual slaughter of Muslims and Hindus. When the French departed Algeria in 1962, the "Harkis" they left behind paid the price of
being loyal to the Mother Country. When we abandoned our allies in South Vietnam, the result was mass murder in the streets,
concentration camps and hundreds of thousands of boat people in the South China Sea, a final
resting place for many. In Cambodia, it was a holocaust.
Trump, however, was elected to end America's involvement in Middle East wars. And if he has
been persuaded that he simply cannot liquidate these wars -- Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen,
Afghanistan -- he will likely end up sacrificing his presidency, trying to rescue the failures
of those who worked hardest to keep him out of the White House.
Consider the wars, active and potential, Trump faces.
Writes Bob Merry in the fall issue of The National interest: "War between Russia and the
West seems nearly inevitable. No self-respecting nation facing inexorable encirclement by an
alliance of hostile neighbors can allow such pressures and forces to continue indefinitely.
Eventually (Russia) must protect its interests through military action."
If Pyongyang tests another atom bomb or ICBM, some national security aides to Trump are not
ruling out preventive war.
Trump himself seems hell-bent on tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran. This would lead
inexorably to a U.S. ultimatum, where Iran would be expected to back down or face a war that
would set the Persian Gulf ablaze.
Yet the country did not vote for confrontation or war.
America voted for Trump's promise to improve ties with Russia, to make Europe shoulder
more of the cost of its defense, to annihilate ISIS and extricate us from Mideast wars, to stay
out of future wars.
America voted for economic nationalism and an end to the mammoth trade deficits with the
NAFTA nations, EU, Japan and China. America voted to halt the invasion across our Southern border and to reduce legal
immigration to
I think that the case of Korea is very different from all the others, but generally I
agree with Mr. Buchanan to the extent that I say: Pat Buchanan for President
Trump's populist-nationalist and America First agenda,
This agenda did exist and Trump used it to get elected. Once he pulled off that trick he
tried to get together again (unsuccessfully) with his New York Plutocrat friends. It's that New York social background. It's always been difficult to see Trump fit together
economically or socially with the America that elected him, and after he got elected he
quickly weakened his ties with Middle America. So why should he complain about Fake News since he got elected on a Fake Agenda?
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This quote is so
well-known that almost everyone knows it, except perhaps the politicians and the generals.
Afghanistan has been called the deathbed of empires. The two recent empires to go down are
the British and the Soviet. For almost 200 years the British tried to tame the Afghan tribes
but couldn't. The devastation they caused did not deter the natives. It is all there in the
history books for everyone to read. The Soviet empire didn't even last ten years. It cut its
losses and ran.
The lack of teaching of history and geography in American schools is quite evident when
one looks at the performance of American forces in Afghanistan after 17 years. Add the
arrogance of the Presidents and the generals to this lack of knowledge and one can understand
the disasterous results of the Afghan war. One other subject that is missing from the modern
presidency is diplomacy. War over diplomacy seems to be the order of the day.
Trump, however, was elected to end America's involvement in Middle East wars. And if he
has been persuaded that he simply cannot liquidate these wars -- Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen,
Afghanistan -- he will likely end up sacrificing his presidency, trying to rescue the
failures of those who worked hardest to keep him out of the White House.
Trump does not even remember what he was elected to do. A man who was determined to drain
the swamp is deep, up to his neck, in that swamp. The neocons and the never-Trumpers are the
main decision makers in the Trump administration. All the loyal supporters have been chased
out of the Trump's inner circle. A man who built his empire with his brain and shrewdness
can't seem to handle the Presidency. He is trying to appease the very same people who opposed
him in the election.
Trump himself seems hell-bent on tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran. This would lead
inexorably to a U.S. ultimatum, where Iran would be expected to back down or face a war
that would set the Persian Gulf ablaze.
It is never going to happen. Not only the Middle East would be set ablaze, but America
will lose its European allies as well. The relations with Russia are already confrontational
and heading fast towards an ultimate war. European allies are also confused about the US
foreign policy or lack thereof. Trade war is brewing with China. The only country which is
happy with this chaos is Israel.
For a smart businessman, Donald Trump can't seem to make any friends. There is a very
simple solution to these wars of choice. Mr. Trump swallow your pride and bring the boys
home. You will save American lives and will also earn the gratitude of the families of these
soldiers. You may even bring peace to many countries around the world and people who have
been displaced by these wars can return home. You may even solve the refugee problem in the
process. You might even save your presidency. Give peace a chance.
No one has ever been able to conquer Afghanistan why would America think it can? Likely
just throwing a bone to the neocons. As for Iran, Trump has been beating his chest all over
the World and doing nothing, again with the Neocon feeding, I don't think he has any intention
of getting into anything larger than a skirmish with anyone, he's a lot smarter than he looks
--
Well while Mr. Buchanan is not an expert in Balkans history, or politics, as I've argued
here, he is excellent in American history and politics. An article somewhat short, because he
is not connecting his sharp analysis to ongoing First Amendment disaster. It comes along,
obviously, but still an excellent piece.
To be copied and saved in my personal archives, anyway. I do not believe that even this site
will last long.
Greetings from Serbia, suicidal country controlled from that feudal fortress (US Embassy)
where our Scott-Pasha resides.
It was the eclipse that swept across America to change it forever.
We now know we are on our own, there is no political solution for this war.
The eclipse marks the end of a war, our war, we lost.
Trump extends Afghan swamp war on the very day.
Eclipse was conjunct Trumps Mars, he was castrated.
Doesn't mean we won't win, but it won't be via the rigged ballot box and the DC swamp.
I think The Donald offered the lame excuse that things looks much different when you're in
the oval office vs. the campaign trail. That won't be any consolation to people who voted for
him in the hopes that their family members in the military would be coming home soon. And it
won't be any consolation to some members of his base.
Now that the generals have gone wild under Trump we may as well admit that we're ruled by
a military junta. We'll let them make all the decisions since they're so brilliant while
Trump tweets and holds stupid rallies trying to convince people that he hasn't reneged on any
campaign promises.
But if it prevents tens of thousands of knuckle dragging Afghans steeped in a culture of
violence, pedophilia and pederasty from entering America as refugees then I guess there's a
silver lining.
My original instinct was to pull out, and historically, I like following my instincts.
But all my life I've heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk
in the Oval Office.
Trump isn't going to keep his campaign promises. That means he's not going to build a
beautiful wall on our southern border.
@KenH I
think The Donald offered the lame excuse that things looks much different when you're in the
oval office vs. the campaign trail. That won't be any consolation to people who voted for him
in the hopes that their family members in the military would be coming home soon. And it
won't be any consolation to some members of his base.
Now that the generals have gone wild under Trump we may as well admit that we're ruled by
a military junta. We'll let them make all the decisions since they're so brilliant while
Trump tweets and holds stupid rallies trying to convince people that he hasn't reneged on any
campaign promises.
"... Before his death in May, Roger Ailes had sent word to Bannon that he wanted to start a channel together. Bannon loved the idea: He believes Fox is heading in a squishy, globalist direction as the Murdoch sons assume more power. ..."
"... "That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying." ..."
"... The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over I feel jacked up Now I'm free. I've got my hands back on my weapons ..."
Axios:
that part of that war effort might include a brand new cable news network to the right of Fox
News.
Axios' Jonathan Swan hears Bannon has told friends he sees a massive opening to the right of
Fox News , raising the possibility that he's going to start a network. Bannon's friends are speculating about whether it will be a standalone TV network, or online
streaming only.
Before his death in May, Roger Ailes had sent word to Bannon that he wanted to start a
channel together. Bannon loved the idea: He believes Fox is heading in a squishy, globalist
direction as the Murdoch sons assume more power.
Now he has the means, motive and opportunity: His chief financial backer, Long Island hedge
fund billionaire Bob Mercer, is ready to invest big in what's coming next, including a huge
overseas expansion of Breitbart News. Of course, this new speculation comes after Bannon declared last Friday that he was "
going to war" for
Trump ...
" If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up. I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents... on Capitol
Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,
Meanwhile, with regard his internal adversaries , at the departments of State and Defense,
who think the United States can enlist Beijing's aid on the North Korean standoff, and at
Treasury and the National Economic Council who don't want to mess with the trading system,
Bannon was ever harsher...
"Oh, they're wetting themselves," he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which
was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only
temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has
big plans to marginalize their influence.
"That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury
and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying."
Finally, perhaps no one can summarize what Bannon has planned for the future than Bannon
himself:
"The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over I feel jacked up Now I'm free.
I've got my hands back on my weapons.
I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There's no
doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now we're about to rev that machine up."
Bannon supported Blackwater founder Erik Prince's plan to use military contractors in the war
in Afghanistan and was against National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster's plan to deploy tens of thousands
of more troops to the Afghan conflict, according to a source with knowledge of the deliberations.
While saying he would "bomb the s**t" out of ISIS, Trump ran on a largely non-interventionist
campaign. He attacked President Bush for invading Iraq and cautioned against toppling the Assad regime
in Syria.
His White House, however, is not populated with like-minded thinkers. Even the most Trump-like
senior adviser left, Stephen Miller,
was a strong supporter of the Iraq War and primarily focuses on domestic policy issues.
Trump does have the habit of speaking to outside advisers on the phone and calls with Bannon and
Roger Stone might be the only times Trump hears war-weary voices.
Trump's power grows. And, his people don't speak first. (Trump speaks what The People are thinking.
Offend Trump and you have offended almost everybody.)
Bye, by)e Democrats. You can't win WITHOUT a Revolution...and not very many of the real People
are really interested in efforts to get one going.
Remember the CENTER of it all (ISIS, RIOTS) is London/Wall Street.
Everything since last Summer, has been coming out of MI5/6 to our FBI, CIA, NSA Business Intelligence
Empire.
The People are not going to go against Lincoln and they aren't
going to stand for anyone to take down the "States Rights" statues.
People are for a Strong Central Government and for a Strong State Government. It isn't "either/or".
It's BOTH. For Mob Rule...uh, not so much... Trump's power is growing steadily.
The People are sometimes for Left, sometimes for Right. It isn't "either/or". It's BOTH.
If you don't know this, you don't know anything about Americans.
These killings and riots are highly organized by both assets and AGENTS of the Anti forces of
Deep State, Deep Business. None of this is "from" WE, The People.
Bannon is now in a better position to expose the deep state. McMaster is probably soiling
his diapers.
Jesse4 > Hillary Clintub • 2 days ago
The deep state just kicked Bannon's incredibly huge butt.
lorsarah > Jesse4 • 2 days ago
The Deep State oligarchs and hacks may have won a small battle but their days are numbered.
The movement that Bannon is part of is growing.
oknow • 2 days ago
This whole intervention crap is for the birds and a waste of money as the years have shown.
If the Germans and Japanese were Islamic or international religious armies it would have never
ended. Maybe it is time that the great oil powers man up and fight.
Trump not backing down from the NK is what strength is. Not this crap of 15 years in foreign
nations.
T100C1970 > oknow • 2 days ago
This bravo sierra warfare did not start with Muzzies. It started with Commies. The Korean
war was the first war the US did not win. We got a tie with the pathetic Norks. Then in the
era in which I served as an Army Officer we managed to LOSE to the Cong + NVA.. The wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan are so far more like "ties" ... assuming you can call it a tie to spend
billions and lose thousands of troops to preserve a sort of status quo.
lorsarah > oknow • 2 days ago
"Not backing down from North Korea" IS foreign intervention, as everyone with a brain knows
that NK, which can't even keep its lights on, is not a threat.
11B30L • 2 days ago
President Trump is allowing his "little tiny ego" to get in the way of White House staffing
decisions, according to conservative commentator Ann Coulter.
Burrito Jackson • 2 days ago
Trump just sent his generals proposal back to the drawing board to keep us in Afghanistan.
Trump hasn't changed. Tired of hearing everyone controls Trump like he is a puppet.
lorsarah > Burrito Jackson • 2 days ago
Why are we there AT ALL? To protect our freedom? Of course not. Self-defense? Of course
not. It's lunacy, just as Vietnam was. But the military-industrial complex makes big money on
lunacy such as Afghanistan.
wars r u.s. • a day ago
Trump is a dove? He bombed Syria with no evidence that Assad did the chemical attack. He
dropped the MOAB on Afghanistan and his only real problem with that war is that we're not
winning. We continue to back the Saudi's in their onslaught of Yemen. Trump wants to decertify
Iran's compliance to the nuke deal even though Iran is in compliance which could lead to the
war the neocons and liberal hawks(Israeli firsters) have been salivating over for decades. He
threatens NK with "fire ad fury" and even recently threatened Venezuela...
"... For the record, Mr. Bannon gave notice on 8/7 to POTUS. As well, Mr. Bannon, when appointed to Trump's cabinet, stated for any who bothered to read/listen that he would accept under one condition, which was he'd be leaving the WH in eight months. Eight months brings us to 8/7. No one fired him. He is back at Breitbart as its Chairman. ..."
"... Bannon's interview with the American Prospect last week was his shot across the proverbial bow aimed directly at the globalists who are determined to keep their march toward raping the world from all her resources aka the NWO/neocon/neolib mafia while fomenting more war(s). ..."
"... If you are unaware of the current round of NAFTA negotiations, now in its fourth day, w/Canada and Mexico OR if you are unaware that on Friday the Trump administration formally launched a Section 301 Trade investigation into China's trading practices, then you are not paying attention to what the right hand is doing. ..."
"... Oh, and btw, it was Kushner and his data operation who carried Trump over the finish line not Bannon and his policy positions. ..."
Francis @68 - Refreshing to read a comment by someone who obviously has made it her/his
business to understand Trump and Team from the conservative perspective. Great comment and spot
on IMHO.
For the record, Mr. Bannon gave notice on 8/7 to POTUS. As well, Mr. Bannon, when appointed
to Trump's cabinet, stated for any who bothered to read/listen that he would accept under one
condition, which was he'd be leaving the WH in eight months. Eight months brings us to 8/7. No
one fired him. He is back at Breitbart as its Chairman.
Bannon's interview with the American Prospect last week was his shot across the proverbial
bow aimed directly at the globalists who are determined to keep their march toward raping the
world from all her resources aka the NWO/neocon/neolib mafia while fomenting more war(s).
Bannon with Mercer and et al backing (and I can make a pretty solid educated guess that
there are others) have been developing a new media platform of some kind which will be launched
in weeks not months (another educated guess). Sinclair broadcasting has been mentioned on other
conservative platforms as getting ready to make a move of some kind as well.
As Breitbart's editor wrote on Friday following the Bannon announcement - "WAR" - is
unequivocally that sites way of saying the Swamp in DC is going to be drained. Indeed, Trump
and Team have already begun to roll out their 2018 election strategy.
Any who hold the belief that Trump is stupid, naive, or whatever derogatory statement
conjured up is just plain wrong and shouldn't be taken seriously by any here who know
better.
Trump is a businessman. Trump is not a politician. And he certainly wasn't elected to serve
as America's grandpa-he ain't gonna hold your hand...ever.
If you are unaware of the current round of NAFTA negotiations, now in its fourth day,
w/Canada and Mexico OR if you are unaware that on Friday the Trump administration formally
launched a Section 301 Trade investigation into China's trading practices, then you are not
paying attention to what the right hand is doing.
There is always much going on behind all of the noise the insufferable Left makes on a daily
basis. Apparently, they don't want you to know about any of the plethora of Executive Orders
signed, the roll back of regulations zero and czars put in place, the trade negotiations and
so, so much more.
On the other hand, conservative sites are all over the blogosphere report daily what this
administration is doing and how it is succeeding. Bannon remains a phone call away.
Oh, and btw, it was Kushner and his data operation who carried Trump over the finish line
not Bannon and his policy positions.
"... The war veteran has never quite clicked with the president, but other West Wing staff members recoiled at a series of smears against General McMaster by internet allies of Mr. Bannon. ..."
Mr. Bannon's disdain for General McMaster also accelerated his demise.
The war veteran
has never quite clicked with the president, but other West Wing staff members recoiled at a
series of smears against General McMaster by internet allies of Mr. Bannon.
The strategist denied involvement, but he also did not speak out against them.
By the time Charlottesville erupted, Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump had a powerful ally in Mr.
Kelly, who shared their belief that Mr. Trump's first statement blaming "many sides" for the
deadly violence needed to be amended.
Mr. Bannon vigorously objected. He told Mr. Kelly that if Mr. Trump delivered a second, more
contrite statement it would do him no good, with either the public or the Washington press
corps, which he denigrated as a "Pretorian guard" protecting the Democrats' consensus that Mr.
Trump is a race-baiting demagogue. Mr. Trump could grovel, beg for forgiveness, even get down
on his knees; it would never work, Mr. Bannon maintained.
"They're going to say two things: It's too late and it's not enough," Mr. Bannon told Mr.
Kelly.
Later in the day, the lead story on the site was "
McMaster Of Disguise: Nat'l Security Adviser Endorsed Book That Advocates Quran-Kissing Apology Ceremonies
." This piece from frequent McMaster critic Aaron Klein said that McMaster endorsed a book that "calls
on the U.S. military to respond to any 'desecrations' of the Quran by service members with an apology
ceremony, and advocates kissing a new copy of the Quran before presenting the Islamic text to the
local Muslim public."
The article went on to say that McMaster has "troubling views" on Islamic terrorism.
The site also published two articles Sunday critical of Ivanka. One of them is an
aggregate of a Daily Mail report that claimed Ivanka helped push Bannon out of the White House.
Shortly after the story was published, the article received an update that said a White House senior
aide stated the Daily Mail report is "totally false."
Breitbart also wrote a
piece that highlighted six times Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner's displeasure with President
Trump had been leaked to the media.
Bannon said in interviews after his departure from the White House that he will use Breitbart
to fight for the president's agenda.
"In many ways, I think I can be more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President
Trump ran on," Bannon told
The New York Times . "And anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with."
"... Tragic that so many in the US don't seem able to see that the problem is gross economic inequality in their country, regardless of race. But divide and rule still works well for the ruling class. ..."
"... There's more to it than that. Its true that the white working class in America are the only group that the media feels it is acceptable to insult/denigrate. What was it Obama said - People in small towns clinging on to their religion & guns. ..."
"... The white middle class has to walk the walk with respect of social justice. Due to the economics of it, multiculturalism has affected the working classes far more than the middle classes. As I say, I'm prepared for the consequences personally, but I wonder how many others would be. ..."
"... People may underestimate the populist element in Bannon's make up. As Scaramucci tells it, both he and Bannon had white middle class fathers who had played with a straight bat and had their retirement savings wiped out in 2008 and all that, while the fat cats were saved by Uncle Sam. Maybe a story just for the telling, but it is out there. ..."
"... "In Bannon's view, we are in the midst of an existential war, and everything is a part of that conflict. Treaties must be torn up, enemies named, culture changed. Global conflagration, should it occur, would only prove the theory correct. For Bannon, the Fourth Turning has arrived. The Grey Champion, a messianic strongman figure, may have already emerged. The apocalypse is now. ..."
"... I got the strong sense that Trump was hunkered down defensively and baring his teeth like a feral dog trapped in a corner. ..."
"... Trump is not Mussolini or Franco in that he is not a true believer ..."
"... With the exception of the military which at this point is a state unto itself the government is a paradox of being both omnipresent and nowhere and thus truly Kafkaesque...utterly opaque and completely visible at all times... ..."
"... The left's focus on identity politics is the reason this Bannon chump is relevant at all. The switch in focus from class to race and gender has segmented the working class from the common struggle. A people divided. This is about the only strategic fact Bannon understands. But it is an important one. ..."
"... Identity politics at its core is mostly untenable and while it might treat the symptoms of disease in the short run it will always collapse under the weight of its internal inconsistencies. The blind squirrel Bannon has found his nut. Continuing to assert that poor white men have it made is demonstrably false and offensive. And gives the alt-right plenty of tools to recruit. ..."
Tragic that so many in the US don't seem able to see that the problem is gross economic inequality in their country, regardless
of race. But divide and rule still works well for the ruling class.
So a billionaire like Trump, with Bannon's aid, does whatever he can to focus the disatisfaction of the population on people
who have a different skin colour, rather than the vastly rich elites who have grabbed such a massive share of US wealth and power
- and demand yet more
There's more to it than that. Its true that the white working class in America are the only group that the media feels
it is acceptable to insult/denigrate. What was it Obama said - People in small towns clinging on to their religion & guns.
Must have gone down really well in those rustbelt towns where everyone is on oxycontin out of sheer despair. But hey, they're
only rednecks so who cares right ?
Tragic that so many in the US don't seem able to see that the problem is gross economic inequality in their country,
regardless of race. But divide and rule still works well for the ruling class.
Exactly, it's all about creating a group you can point to and say "at least you're not as bad off as them!"
When your entire existence is predicated on 'at least I'm not the worst off' it becomes frightening when those who were previously
'worse off' start improving. But instead of improving themselves they try and bring the others down again.
That's what I don't get about the Nazis who turned up in Charlottsville: they chanted "Jews will not replace us" and also "we're
going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump". How can Nazis believe Trump is on their side when his daughter is married to a
Jew? There are so many contradictions in this situation that I can't get my head around it.
Someone has to lose out in a redistribution of anything, be it political power or wealth. I mention the white middle classes
because they tend to the the keyboard warriors refusing to tackle the insecurities and concerns of the white working class, and
simply resorting to calling them racist.
The white middle class has to walk the walk with respect of social justice. Due to the economics of it, multiculturalism
has affected the working classes far more than the middle classes. As I say, I'm prepared for the consequences personally, but
I wonder how many others would be.
Agree with your latter point and I'm sensitive to the fact that within class groups, minorities and women remain disadvantaged;
I'm not saying we don't continue to look at that. But realistically, on an economic level, you're not going to get white working
class men accepting that middle class minorities or women are disadvantaged compared to them, are you? The only reason this distinction
doesn't seem to happen (class lines) is because most of the SJW contingent suddenly have to check an aspect of privilege they're
unkeen to pay attention to.
People may underestimate the populist element in Bannon's make up. As Scaramucci tells it, both he and Bannon had white
middle class fathers who had played with a straight bat and had their retirement savings wiped out in 2008 and all that, while
the fat cats were saved by Uncle Sam. Maybe a story just for the telling, but it is out there.
As to Bannon still in the job, I think LBJ's story about tents and which way the piss goes applies.
Maybe a story just for the telling, but it is out there.
As others have noted, given that both of them worked in finance/had some background in finance, it's odd that their fathers
lost savings which could have been avoided (Bannon's father, for instance, only lost out because he sold his stock but it regained
its value shortly afterwards, i.e. it was a bad financial decision). But as you say, its out there.
Indeed. If you held on through the crash you now have double the money you had in 2007.
There are some pretty basic retirement rules (60/40 equity to bonds or less, keep 2 years in cash) which if anyone followed
would have resulted in no pain from the crash, just some anxiety.
If he got greedy, had 100% in equities and sold at the bottom of the market because he had not kept a cash cushion - well he
cannot blame the Chinese for that.
Of course he was bitter before his son became a billionaire, but to still be bitter is more about character than the economy.
"In Bannon's view, we are in the midst of an existential war, and everything is a part of that conflict. Treaties must
be torn up, enemies named, culture changed. Global conflagration, should it occur, would only prove the theory correct. For Bannon,
the Fourth Turning has arrived. The Grey Champion, a messianic strongman figure, may have already emerged. The apocalypse is now.
"What we are witnessing," Bannon told The Washington Post last month, "is the birth of a new political order.""
An interesting interpretation of his behavior. I got the strong sense that Trump was hunkered down defensively and baring
his teeth like a feral dog trapped in a corner.
" and it has forged an indefatigable core of support that will stay with Trump through the next general election and
beyond."
Except that atavistic and uneducated people can and will change their sense of allegiance on a dime or a whim and given the
fact that Trump is not an ideologue but rather an unstable pathological narcissist and a bigot (versus espousing a coherent racist
plan of action because he has a particular ideological agenda) there is no way to effectively predict what his actions will echo
in that part of his base and therefore no way to predict what his base will do if Trump is untethered from Bannon. Trump is as
likely to make a boneheaded deal with China that pleases Wall Street as he is to accidentally start a war. He is as likely to
break his support as he is to cement it.
As Christopher Hitchens said:
"A feature, not just of the age of the end of ideology, but of the age immediately preceding the age of the end of ideology,
is that of the dictator who has no ideology at all."
Trump is not Mussolini or Franco in that he is not a true believer though he is a bigot and clearly dictatorial. Trump
is all expediency first and faith second even if he has consistently been a racist.
The second problematic issue is that if you assert that Axelrod and Rove "achieved" anything of lasting consequence then Axelrod
could not have followed Rove and Bannon could not have followed Axelrod.
Unlike in France where the president serves far longer the reelection cycle here with its utterly corrupt need to raise massive
amounts of cash which then forces candidates to constantly be in race mode (and effectively reduces the period of actual governance
to around 18 months) has created a perpetually unstable and ineffective bureaucracy that has more in common with late Ottoman
inefficiency than it does with a contemporary "modern" state.
With the exception of the military which at this point is a state unto itself the government is a paradox of being both
omnipresent and nowhere and thus truly Kafkaesque...utterly opaque and completely visible at all times...
Further, there is this: "There's another reason why firing Bannon wouldn't be a huge loss: his work is largely done."
In fact, Trump has achieved nothing and done nothing of lasting change to the bureaucracy. In a sense it is analogous to the
situation with North Korea where, despite Trump's pale Strangelove imitation it was noted in the media that the military had made
no changes to its posture.
The only time I have ever agreed with Bannon is that his analysis of the potential for N Korea to destroy S Korea with an artillery
barrage. With about 12,000 artillery prices the North could launch somewhere around 50,000 shells per minute into Soul. Do the
arithmetic for a 10 minute shelling. Any grandstanding by the US military is simply folly.
The left's focus on identity politics is the reason this Bannon chump is relevant at all. The switch in focus from class
to race and gender has segmented the working class from the common struggle. A people divided. This is about the only strategic
fact Bannon understands. But it is an important one.
Identity politics at its core is mostly untenable and while it might treat the symptoms of disease in the short run it
will always collapse under the weight of its internal inconsistencies. The blind squirrel Bannon has found his nut. Continuing
to assert that poor white men have it made is demonstrably false and offensive. And gives the alt-right plenty of tools to recruit.
"... Contrary to Trump's threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: "There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." ..."
"... "To me," Bannon said, "the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover." ..."
"... Bannon's plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. "We're going to run the tables on these guys. We've come to the conclusion that they're in an economic war and they're crushing us." ..."
"... "The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." ..."
"... For ideas on how to counter the far-right agenda in the aftermath of the events in Charlottesville, click here . ..."
You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of
events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss's continuing indulgence of white supremacists. Allies of National Security
Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief.
Trump's defense of Bannon, at his Tuesday press conference, was tepid.
But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China,
and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. "They're
wetting themselves," he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.
Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon's assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose
once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me.
Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon's assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking
loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me. I'd
just published a column on how China was
profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon's boss.
"In Kim, Trump has met his match," I wrote. "The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious
than at any time since October 1962." Maybe Bannon wanted to scream at me?
I told the assistant that I was on vacation, but I would be happy to speak by phone. Bannon promptly called.
Far from dressing me down for comparing Trump to Kim, he began, "It's a great honor to finally track you down. I've followed your
writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it."
"We're at economic war with China," he added. "It's in all their literature. They're not shy about saying what they're doing.
One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it's gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they're just tapping
us along. It's just a sideshow."
Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections
and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote. Given that China is not likely to do
much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason
not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.
Contrary to Trump's threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: "There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget
it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes
from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." Bannon went on
to describe his battle inside the administration to take a harder line on China trade, and not to fall into a trap of wishful thinking
in which complaints against China's trade practices now had to take a backseat to the hope that China, as honest broker, would help
restrain Kim.
"To me," Bannon said, "the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue
to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able
to recover."
Bannon's plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology
transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. "We're going
to run the tables on these guys. We've come to the conclusion that they're in an economic war and they're crushing us."
But what about his internal adversaries, at the departments of State and Defense, who think the United States can enlist Beijing's
aid on the North Korean standoff, and at Treasury and the National Economic Council who don't want to mess with the trading system?
"Oh, they're wetting themselves," he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats
with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon
has big plans to marginalize their influence.
"I'm changing out people at East Asian Defense; I'm getting hawks in. I'm getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and
Pacific Affairs] out at State."
But can Bannon really win that fight internally?
"That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council chair]
Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying."
"We gotta do this. The president's default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy. Don't get me wrong. It's like,
every day."
Bannon explained that his strategy is to battle the trade doves inside the administration while building an outside coalition
of trade hawks that includes left as well as right. Hence the phone call to me.
There are a couple of things that are startling about this premise. First, to the extent that most of the opponents of Bannon's
China trade strategy are other Trump administration officials, it's not clear how reaching out to the left helps him. If anything,
it gives his adversaries ammunition to characterize Bannon as unreliable or disloyal.
More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive publication (the cover lines on whose first
two issues after Trump's election were "Resisting Trump" and "Containing Trump") and assume that a possible convergence of views
on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.
The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not
exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the press. He's probably the most media-savvy person in America.
I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the ugly white nationalism epitomized by the
racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump's reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of
using Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump's base.
He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's
a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."
"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.
From his lips to Trump's ear.
"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every
day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
I had never before spoken with Bannon. I came away from the conversation with a sense both of his savvy and his recklessness.
The waters around him are rising, but he is going about his business of infighting, and attempting to cultivate improbable outside
allies, to promote his China strategy. His enemies will do what they do.
Either the reports of the threats to Bannon's job are grossly exaggerated and leaked by his rivals, or he has decided not to change
his routine and to go down fighting. Given Trump's impulsivity, neither Bannon nor Trump really has any idea from day to day whether
Bannon is staying or going. He has survived earlier threats. So what the hell, damn the torpedoes.
The conversation ended with Bannon inviting me to the White House after Labor Day to continue the discussion of China and trade.
We'll see if he's still there.
For ideas on how to counter the far-right agenda in the aftermath of the events in Charlottesville,
click here .
"... Lots of dunces, but chief strategist Steve Bannon, sadly, isn't one of them. The intellectual leader of the alt-right movement is no genius – nobody with his political views could be – but neither is he an idiot. He's one of the few people in that White House with even a primitive grasp of long-term strategy, which makes his impulsive-seeming decision to call The American Prospect this week curious. ..."
"... In the interview, Bannon said there was "no military solution" to North Korea's posturing. He stressed his efforts to fight economic war with China, adding, in a Scaramuccian touch, that his intramural foes on that front were "wetting themselves." ..."
"... "The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em," he said. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats." ..."
The Trump administration's stubbly race warrior reminds us why he's so dangerous
By Matt Taibbi
21 hours ago
The list of nitwits in the Trump administration is long. Betsy DeVos, in charge of education
issues, seems capable of losing at tic-tac-toe. Ben Carson thought the great pyramids of Egypt
were grain warehouses. Rick Perry, merely in charge of the nation's nuclear arsenal, probably
has post-it notes all over his office to remind him what things are: telephone, family photo,
souvenir atomic-reactor paperweight, etc.
Lots of dunces, but chief strategist Steve Bannon, sadly, isn't one of them. The
intellectual leader of the alt-right movement is no genius – nobody with his political
views could be – but neither is he an idiot. He's one of the few people in that White
House with even a primitive grasp of long-term strategy, which makes his impulsive-seeming
decision to call The American Prospect this week curious.
In the interview, Bannon said there was "no military solution" to North Korea's
posturing. He stressed his efforts to fight economic war with China, adding, in a Scaramuccian
touch, that his intramural foes on that front were "wetting themselves."
When asked about the Charlottesville tragedy, Bannon called the neo-Nazi marchers "a
collection of clowns." He also called them "losers" and a "fringe element."
This theoretically should be a dark time for Bannon, since Charlottesville reminded the
whole world of his inexplicable and indefensible presence in the White House. The story has
even the National Review howling for his dismissal.
But Prospect writer Robert Kuttner noted with surprise in his piece that Bannon seemed
upbeat. He essentially told Kuttner he believed the Charlottesville mess and stories like it
were a long-term political windfall for people like himself.
"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em," he said. "I want them to talk
about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic
nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
President Trump has told senior aides that he has decided to remove Stephen K. Bannon, the
embattled White House chief strategist who helped Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, according to
two administration officials briefed on the discussion.
The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr.
Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to
confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some
time.
As of Friday morning, the two men were still discussing Mr. Bannon's future, the officials
said. A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had
submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this
week, but the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.
Mr. Bannon had clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers and members of the
president's family.
But the loss of Mr. Bannon, the right-wing nationalist who helped propel some of Mr. Trump's
campaign promises into policy reality, raises the potential for the president to face criticism
from the conservative news media base that supported him over the past year.
Mr. Bannon's many critics bore down after the violence in Charlottesville. Outraged over Mr.
Trump's insistence that "both sides" were to blame for the violence that erupted at a white
nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead, human rights activists demanded that the president
fire so-called nationalists working in the West Wing. That group of hard-right populists in the
White House is led by Mr. Bannon.
On Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York, Mr. Trump refused to guarantee Mr. Bannon's job
security but defended him as "not a racist" and "a friend."
"We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon," Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Bannon's dismissal followed an Aug. 16 interview he initiated with a writer with whom he
had never spoken, with the progressive publication The American Prospect. In it, Mr. Bannon
mockingly played down the American military threat to North Korea as nonsensical: "Until
somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don't
die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about,
there's no military solution here, they got us." ...
Reply
Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:37 AM
Trump on North Korea
https://nyti.ms/2vI6smj
NYT - MARK LANDLER - August 17
WASHINGTON -- For all his fire-breathing nationalism -- the demands to ban Muslims, build a
wall on the Mexican border and honor statues of Confederate heroes -- Stephen K. Bannon has
played another improbable role in the Trump White House: resident dove.
From Afghanistan and North Korea to Syria and Venezuela, Mr. Bannon, the president's chief
strategist, has argued against making military threats or deploying American troops into
foreign conflicts.
His views, delivered in a characteristically bomb-throwing style, have antagonized people
across the administration, leaving Mr. Bannon isolated and in danger of losing his job. But
they are thoroughly in keeping with his nationalist credo, and they have occasionally resonated
with the person who matters most: President Trump.
Mr. Bannon's dovish tendencies spilled into view this week in unguarded comments he made
about North Korea to a liberal publication, The American Prospect. Days after Mr. Trump
threatened to rain "fire and fury" on the North Korean government if it did not curb its
belligerent behavior, Mr. Bannon said, "There's no military solution here; they got us."
...
Reply
Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:43 AM
The casualties are not worth the little chance of blunting Kim.
Beside look: with all that money and training and so forth....DDG 62, an Aegis destroyer
could not stay safe in peaceful water!
US can't poke ISIS out of Raqqa in 3 years, what would happen with 2 million soldier tough
as VC?
"When asked about the Charlottesville tragedy, Bannon called the neo-Nazi marchers "a
collection of clowns." He also called them "losers" and a "fringe element.""
Maybe that was it? Why would he call the Prospect? Did he think he was calling the American
Conservative and it was off the record? Did he know he was out?
Reply
Friday, August 18, 2017 at 10:45 AM
Stephen K. Bannon's exit was described in a White House statement as a mutual decision
between Mr. Bannon and Chief of Staff John Kelly.
Critics of Mr. Bannon, a right-wing nationalist, bore down after the violence in
Charlottesville.
Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled chief strategist who helped President Trump win the 2016
election but clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers, is leaving his post, a
White House spokeswoman announced Friday.
"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be
Steve's last day," the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a
statement. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best." ...
Reply
Friday, August 18, 2017 at 11:31 AM
What kind of talk doesn't threaten the money and power of the 0.1%?
"The Democratic Party isn't going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime
bill."
by Jake Johnson, staff writer
....................
"The Democratic Party isn't going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill,"
Warren said. "We're not going back to the days of being lukewarm on choice. We're not going
back to the days when universal healthcare was something Democrats talked about on the campaign
trail but were too chicken to fight for after they got elected."
"And," Warren concluded, "we're not going back to the days when a Democrat who wanted to run
for a seat in Washington first had to grovel on Wall Street."
To a certain extent Bannon symbolized backlash against neoliberal globalization, that is mounting in the USA. With him gone Trump
is a really emasculated and become a puppet of generals, who are the only allies left capable to run the show. Some of them are real
neocons. What a betrayal of voters who are sick and tired of wars for expansion and protection of global neoliberal empire.
Notable quotes:
"... What Bannon's exit might mean, however, is the end of even the pretense that Trumpist economic policy is anything different from standard Republicanism -- and I think giving up the pretense matters, at least a bit. ..."
"... The basics of the U.S. economic debate are really very simple. The federal government, as often noted, is an insurance company with an army: aside from defense, its spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (plus some ACA subsidies). ..."
"... Conservatives always claim that they want to make government smaller. But that means cutting these programs -- and what we know now, after the repeal debacle, is that people like all these programs, even the means-tested programs like Medicaid. Obama paid a large temporary price for making Medicaid/ACA bigger, paid for with taxes on the wealthy, but now that it's in place, voters hate the idea of taking it away. ..."
"... So if Bannon is out, what's left? It's just reverse Robin Hood with extra racism. On real policy, in other words, Trump is now bankrupt. ..."
"... with Bannon and economic nationalism gone, he will eventually double down on that part even more. If anything, Trump_vs_deep_state is going to get even uglier, and Trump even less presidential (if such a thing is possible) now that he has fewer people pushing for trade wars. ..."
Everyone seems to be reporting that Steve Bannon is out. I have no insights about the palace intrigue; and anyone who thinks
Trump will become "presidential" now is an idiot. In particular, I very much doubt that the influence of white supremacists and
neo-Nazis will wane.
What Bannon's exit might mean, however, is the end of even the pretense that Trumpist economic policy is anything different
from standard Republicanism -- and I think giving up the pretense matters, at least a bit.
The basics of the U.S. economic debate are really very simple. The federal government, as often noted, is an insurance
company with an army: aside from defense, its spending is dominated by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (plus some ACA subsidies).
Conservatives always claim that they want to make government smaller. But that means cutting these programs -- and what
we know now, after the repeal debacle, is that people like all these programs, even the means-tested programs like Medicaid. Obama
paid a large temporary price for making Medicaid/ACA bigger, paid for with taxes on the wealthy, but now that it's in place, voters
hate the idea of taking it away.
So what's a tax-cutter to do? His agenda is fundamentally unpopular; how can it be sold?
One long-standing answer is to muddy the waters, and make elections about white resentment. That's been the strategy since
Nixon, and Trump turned the dial up to 11. And they've won a lot of elections -- but never had the political capital to reverse
the welfare state.
Another strategy is to invoke voodoo: to claim that taxes can be cut without spending cuts, because miracles will happen. That
has sometimes worked as a political strategy, but overall it seems to have lost its punch. Kansas is a cautionary tale; and under
Obama federal taxes on the top 1 percent basically went back up to pre-Reagan levels.
So what did Trump seem to offer that was new? First, during the campaign he combined racist appeals with claims that he wouldn't
cut the safety net. This sounded as if he was offering a kind of herrenvolk welfare state: all the benefits you expect, but only
for your kind of people.
Second, he offered economic nationalism: we were going to beat up on the Chinese, the Mexicans, somebody, make the Europeans
pay tribute for defense, and that would provide the money for so much winning, you'd get tired of winning. Economic nonsense,
but some voters believed it.
Where are we now? The herrenvolk welfare state never materialized, in part because Trump is too lazy to understand policy at
all, and outsourced health care to the usual suspects. So Trumpcare turned out to be the same old Republican thing: slash benefits
for the vulnerable to cut taxes for the rich. And it was desperately unpopular.
Meanwhile, things have moved very slowly on the economic nationalism front -- partly because a bit of reality struck, as export
industries realized what was at stake and retailers and others balked at the notion of new import taxes. But also, there were
very few actual voices for that policy with Trump's ear -- mainly Bannon, as far as I can tell.
So if Bannon is out, what's left? It's just reverse Robin Hood with extra racism. On real policy, in other words, Trump
is now bankrupt.
But he does have the racism thing. And my prediction is that with Bannon and economic nationalism gone, he will eventually
double down on that part even more. If anything, Trump_vs_deep_state is going to get even uglier, and Trump even less presidential (if such
a thing is possible) now that he has fewer people pushing for trade wars.
At least Bannon does not look like a sociopath as Hillary "We came, we saw he died" and her
inner cicle. He has some concerns about South koreian population, dying for US empire
geopolitical goals.
Notable quotes:
"... "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." ..."
... [in] an Aug. 16
interview
he initiated with a writer
with whom he had never spoken, with the progressive publication The American Prospect. In it,
Mr. Bannon mockingly played down the American military threat to North Korea as nonsensical:
"Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in
Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're
talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."
He also bad-mouthed his colleagues in the Trump administration, vowed to oust a female
diplomat at the State Department and mocked officials as "wetting themselves" over the
consequences of radically changing trade policy.
"... He was then moved quickly to contain the influence of chief strategist Steve Bannon, who McMaster removed from the National Security Council. If you recall, he was appointed to contain other Trump loyalists such as Michael Flynn, as well. ..."
"... Recently, a campaign accusing him of being anti-Israel has been waged with the support of billionaire Sheldon Adelson by a coalition of alt-right nationalists that includes Steve Bannon ..."
Remember Lieutenant-General Herbert Raymond McMaster? He was appointed as President Trump's national
security adviser back in February. He was then moved quickly to contain the influence of chief
strategist Steve Bannon, who McMaster removed from the National Security Council. If you recall,
he was appointed to contain other Trump loyalists such as Michael Flynn, as well.
Recently, a campaign accusing him of being anti-Israel has been waged with the support of
billionaire Sheldon Adelson by a coalition of alt-right nationalists that includes Steve Bannon
and extreme right-wing Zionists such as the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton
Klein, as well as by Israeli journalist Caroline Glick from the Jerusalem Post. President Trump,
in response to all of this, called McMaster "a good man, very pro-Israel," and Israeli officials
have also come forward calling McMaster a friend of Israel.
On to talk about these connections and tensions is Shir Hever. Shir is a Real News correspondent
in Heidelberg, Germany. Of course, he covers Israel and Palestine for us extensively. I thank you
so much for joining us, Shir.
SHIR HEVER: Thanks for having me, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: Shir, President Trump is now six months into his office as president. He initially
has appointed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to take up the Israel file, but there are these allegations
flying against General McMaster. Explain to us what's going on. Why are these individuals like Sheldon
Adelson even concerned about how Trump is responding in terms of Israel and Israel policy?
SHIR HEVER: I think there's very little that General McMaster can actually do about Israel or
against Israel. It really doesn't matter much. The only issue that has come up was the Iran nuclear
deal, and I think this is going to be a decision taken directly by President Trump and not by McMaster.
Also, what exactly is the Israel interest regarding the Iran nuclear deal? It is not so clear. Obviously,
Prime Minister Netanyahu has a certain opinion, but other Israeli politicians have other opinions.
I think this is really a symbolic issue. There are people in the alt-right and also the extreme Zionism
who are using this old worn-out accusation that somebody is anti-Israel in order to get their own
people into the National Security Council, in order to exert influence on the Trump administration.
This coalition between extreme right nationalists, white nationalists in the United States, and Jewish
Zionists, which traditionally were on opposing sides, are now working together because of this very
strange rise of this alt-right.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right. Now, give us a greater sense of the connection or the tensions between
these alt-right organizations and McMaster and Bannon. Map this for us.
SHIR HEVER: Yeah. I've been looking through these accusations that Caroline Glick, deputy editor
of the Jerusalem Post, and Steve Bannon himself, and also Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization
of America. What problem do they have with McMaster? They make very vague things about some statements
that he made, but they couldn't put them in context. He said that Israel is an occupying power. Of
course, Israel is an occupying power, but they couldn't place that statement. The only thing that
their criticism boils down to is they say McMaster is a remnant of the Obama administration. He continues
the Obama policies, and therefore he's not loyal to Trump.
I think this is the crux of the matter, because actually, for people like Caroline Glick and I
think also for Sheldon Adelson, their relation to Trump borders on religious. They consider Trump
to be some kind of messiah or savior that will allow Israel once and for all to annex the occupied
territory, expand its borders, and then the land will be redeemed. They talk about this in religious
terminology.
Here's the problem. Trump has been president for six months now, and Israel did not annex the territory.
It did not expand its borders. In fact, it has gone from one crisis to the next, and the Israeli
government is not able to cement its power over the Palestinians. Palestinian resistance is not tied
down. They're looking for an explanation. The explanation is that something is not pure in the Trump
administration, and they're pointing the finger at McMaster saying, "Because of people like him who
are sabotaging Trump's own policies from the inside, then this is preventing the Trump administration
from reaching its full potential."
SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Obviously, Netanyahu and the Israeli government doesn't agree with this
assessment. In fact, they have come out supporting McMaster as being a good supporter of Israel.
How does this play out here?
SHIR HEVER: Absolutely. Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing real politics. He knows that there's nothing
that President Trump can do that will actually make Israel suddenly conquer more territory. That's
not the point. Netanyahu is trying to balance a very complicated system with pressure from different
points, and he is a populist, and he's only in power because of his populism. Now, his administration
is under threat because of corruption allegations, so this is a problem for him. When people expect
that the Trump administration will free his hands to do whatever he wants, Netanyahu suddenly has
a problem because he needs to come up with a new excuse. Why doesn't he annex all the occupied territory?
Of course, for him, it's not a good time to get into a fight with the Trump administration. He
wants to create the impression that things are happening under the surface, that he is in the know,
that his friends are involved in this, but I think the fact that Sheldon Adelson, the big financial
supporter of Netanyahu, is now switching to support extreme right groups that have nothing to do
with the interests of the Israeli current administration, but are actually trying to push the Israeli
administration to move further to the extreme right and to annex territory, that puts Netanyahu in
trouble. I think it also spells some clouds over the warm relationship between Netanyahu and Adelson.
SHARMINI PERIES: Coming back to this side of things here in the United States, in light of the events
of Charlottesville, Shir, showing a direct link between the alt-right and hardcore racists and neo-Nazis,
why would extreme right-wing Zionist Jewish organizations and individuals like Glick and Klein agree
to cooperate with the alt-right in this way?
SHIR HEVER: I think people on the left tend to forget that, just like the left considers itself
to be a kind of universalist movement, and that leftists around the world should have solidarity
with each other, the right also has a kind of solidarity, especially the extreme right. Extreme right
movements in different countries consider the extreme right in other countries to be their allies.
One of the things we saw in Charlottesville is that some of these neo-Nazi groups and white nationalist
groups are big supporters of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria, because they see him as the kind of strong
leader they would like to see in the United States as well.
For people who see Donald Trump talking about America first, then they're saying, "Okay, that's exactly
the kind of administration we want to see in Israel, somebody taking about Israel first." For Caroline
Gluck or for a Morton Klein, they are willing to accept a very heavy load of racism and even anti-semitism
against Jews from the Trump administration and from its supporters in exchange for being allowed
to copy that same kind of racism and that same kind of right-wing policy towards their minorities.
Just like the American administration has its minorities, Muslims, Mexicans which are being targeted,
Israel also has its minorities, Palestinians and asylum-seekers, and they want those people to be
targeted in the same harsh language and the same harsh policies, so that we can [inaudible] a great
compromise.
I have to say, the events in Charlottesville had a profound impact on Israeli public opinion.
In fact, there are a lot of Israelis who are very concerned about this kind of coalition. They are
saying, "No, there's not that much that we're willing to take in order to keep the relations with
the Trump administration on good footing." Because of that, the president of Israel, President Rivlin,
and also the education minister Naftali Bennett issued statements condemning white nationalists and
neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. I think Naftali Bennett, who is the head of the Jewish Nationalist
Party in Israel, and he's actually of the same political camp as Caroline Glick, as Morton Klein,
when he makes that statement, that shows that even he thinks that they have gone too far.
SHARMINI PERIES: Interesting analysis, Shir. I thank you so much for joining us today. I guess the
situation in Charlottesville is evolving, and it would be interesting to continue to keep an eye
on what's developing here against what's happening in Israel as well. Thank you so much.
SHIR HEVER: Thank you, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: Thank you for joining us here on the Real News Network.
Confusing, at least to me, in any case I believe that the Zionists learned a lot from the Nazis
and there is very little difference between the two groups. I would say that the main difference
lies in the fact that the Zionists are sneakier and know how to play with popular opinion. That's
why it doesn't surprise me that they are making a common cause with the white supremacists groups.
The only surprise here is that they are doing it openly now. They have become brave and have
decided to take the backlash. Perhaps they are doing so because they know they have the support
of Trump.
Divide and conquer. Soon we will be fighting on our own streets against each other. It will
be the death of the US...
"For Caroline Gluck or for a Morton Klein, they are willing to accept a very heavy load of
racism and even anti-semitism against Jews from the Trump administration and from its supporters
in exchange for being allowed to copy that same kind of racism and that same kind of right-wing
policy towards their minorities."
I have great respect for Shir Hever, he has great insight into Israel society and politics.
However, his statement that Klein and Glick (and maybe Adelson) want to be "allowed" to copy Trump's
supporter's racism and right-wing policies towards minorities in Israel is beyond hilarious. Minorities
in Israel have been and continue to be subjected to racist and supremacist policies (much worse
than anything Trump supporters can even imagine) by the Zionists since the theft of Palestinian's
land in 1948. The Israelis are not just pursuing racist policies but as Israeli historian Ilan
Pappe said, they are committing slow motion genocide against the Palestinians.
Ethnic nationalism rises when the state and the nation experience economic difficulties. Weimar
republic is a classic example here.
Notable quotes:
"... That's exactly nationalism, for sure. The work of that wealth creation by the way is done by the all the classes below the rentier class, from working to middle class. The funneling upwards thing is actually theft. ..."
"... The middle class is shrinking and being pushed down closer to rage because the wealth-stealing mechanisms have become bigger and better, and saturated the entire national system, including its electoral politics. This real face of capitalism has driven out the iconic American Dream, which was the essence of upward mobility. ..."
"... Nationalism is an ugly word, but it's easily reached for when there aren't any better words around. In Russia, they already went through what faces the US, and they figured it out. ..."
"... "In our view, faster growth is necessary but not sufficient to restore higher intergenerational income mobility," they wrote. "Evidence suggests that, to increase income mobility, policymakers should focus on raising middle-class and lower-income household incomes." ..."
"... Advocating smoothed-out relations with Russia (for commercial perso reasons, Tillerson, etc. and a need to grade adversaries and accept some into the fold, like Russia, instead of Iran ), a more level playing field, multi-polar world, to actually become more dominant in trade (China etc.) and waste less treasure on supporting enemies, aka proxy stooges, to no purpose (e.g. Muslim brotherhood, Al Q kooks, ISIS) and possibly even Israel -- hmmm. ..."
"... The old guard will do much to get rid of the upstart and his backers (who they are exactly I'd quite like to know?) as all their positions and revenues are at risk ..."
"... The Trump crowd seems at the same time both vulnerable and determined and thus navigating à vue as the F say, by sight and without a plan An underground internal war which is stalemated, leading to instrumentalising the ppl and creating chaos, scandals, etc. ..."
The US has no problem generating wealth, and has no need to force conflict with China. The
US's problem is that that wealth is funneled upwards. Wealth inequality is not a meme. "Shrinking
middle class" is a euphemism for downward-mobility of the middle class, an historical incubator
for Reaction. And that's what we have here, reactionaries from a middle class background who now
are earning less than their parents at menial jobs, or who are unemployed, becoming goons; aping
the klan, appropriating nazi icons, blaming the foreigner, the negro, the Jew, the Muslim, for
their circumstances. A "trade war" will not help them one iota, it will make their lives worse,
and Bannon will go out and say it's the fault of the foreigner and the immigrant, their numbers
wool swell. More terror, depper culture wars. I suppose that's nationalism to some people.
That's exactly nationalism, for sure. The work of that wealth creation by the way is done
by the all the classes below the rentier class, from working to middle class. The funneling
upwards thing is actually theft.
The middle class is shrinking and being pushed down closer to rage because the wealth-stealing
mechanisms have become bigger and better, and saturated the entire national system, including
its electoral politics. This real face of capitalism has driven out the iconic American Dream,
which was the essence of upward mobility.
Nationalism is an ugly word, but it's easily reached for when there aren't any better words
around. In Russia, they already went through what faces the US, and they figured it out.
Since we're looking for the grown-ups, let's turn to Vladimir Putin, always reliable for sanity
when direction is lost.
Putin recalled the words of outstanding Soviet Russian scholar Dmitry Likhachev that patriotism
drastically differs from nationalism. "Nationalism is hatred of other peoples, while patriotism
is love for your motherland," Putin cited his words.
"In our view, faster growth is necessary but not sufficient to restore higher intergenerational
income mobility," they wrote. "Evidence suggests that, to increase income mobility, policymakers
should focus on raising middle-class and lower-income household incomes."
Interventions worth considering include universal preschool and greater access to public
universities, increasing the minimum wage, and offering vouchers to help families with kids
move from poor neighborhoods into areas with better schools and more resources, they said.
Is there any political party or group in the US that suggests this?
The Corporate "fascist" - with grains of salt - USA. The 'democracy' part is fiction, camouflaged
via a fools theatre two-party system and ginormous social re-distribution, amongst others..
the Core (PTB) found itself through miscalculation and loss of power subject to a challenger
who broke thru the \organised/ fake elections, to attempt some kind of re-adjustement - renewal
- re-set - review...
Advocating smoothed-out relations with Russia (for commercial perso reasons, Tillerson,
etc. and a need to grade adversaries and accept some into the fold, like Russia, instead of Iran
), a more level playing field, multi-polar world, to actually become more dominant in trade (China
etc.) and waste less treasure on supporting enemies, aka proxy stooges, to no purpose (e.g. Muslim
brotherhood, Al Q kooks, ISIS) and possibly even Israel -- hmmm.
Heh, the profits of domination are to be organised, extracted and distributed, differently.
One Mafia-type tribe taking over from another! Ivanka will be The Sweet First Woman Prezzie! Style,
Heart, Love, Looks! Go!
The old guard will do much to get rid of the upstart and his backers (who they are exactly
I'd quite like to know?) as all their positions and revenues are at risk, so they are activating
all - anything to attack. The Trump crowd seems at the same time both vulnerable and determined
and thus navigating à vue as the F say, by sight and without a plan An underground internal
war which is stalemated, leading to instrumentalising the ppl and creating chaos, scandals, etc.
"... McMaster's was spewing nonsense. The same was said about the Soviet Union and China when they became nuclear weapons states. North Korea just became one . Conventional deterrence of both sides has worked with North Korea for decades. Nuclear deterrence with North Korea will work just as well as it did with the Soviet and Chinese communists. If North Korea were really not deterrable the U.S. should have nuked it yesterday to minimize the overall risk and damage. It is the McMaster position that is ideological and not rational or "grown up" at all. ..."
"... Compare that to Steve Bannon's take on the issue: ..."
"... "There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us." ..."
"... But looking at things now, rather than a spoilt paranoid kid, perhaps someone trained from an early age for leadership, and perhaps rather than being paranoid (Russia/China), perhaps a leader that finds it more important to create a deterrence against the US. Third generation at war with the US and his seen his father was fucked over when trying to make a deal with the US. NK's nuke and missile tech have come a long way in the few short years Kim Jong Un has been in power. ..."
"... "Deterrence is a strategy intended to dissuade an adversary from taking an action not yet started, or to prevent them from doing something that another state desires." ..."
"... Classic deterrence strategy IS working for NK perfectly. ..."
"... All one has to do to know what Bannon's position on Iran is to read Breitbart on any given day. Unless we are supposed to believe that Bannon's opinions are not reflected by the website he ran for four years. Bannon is for war against Islam in general, there is nothing "realist" about his foreign policy. ..."
"... @12... "Bannon is a fascist" I'm not so sure. Mussolini defined fascism as being an alliance of corporate and state powers... but Bannon (and most of his followers) have no trust in the corporate sector as they [the corporate sector] are to a large degree Globalists - they used the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would even call them traitors. So you could call him a Nationalist. ..."
"... Bannon makes sense. That must be why many want him gone especially the neocons. As to North Korea, the US should have admitted "facts on the ground" long ago and worked to sign the official end of the war and work to get the two Koreas talking and working together. ..."
The Democrats and the media
love
the Pentagon generals in the White House. They are the "grown ups":
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., had words of praise for Donald Trump's new pick for national
security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster -- calling the respected military officer a
"certified, card-carrying grown-up,"
Who is really the sane person on, say, North Korea?
The "grown-up" General McMaster, Trump's National Security Advisor, is not one of them. He
claims North Korea is not deterrable from doing something insane.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But your predecessor Susan Rice wrote this week that the U.S. could tolerate
nuclear weapons in North Korea the same way we tolerated nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union
far more during the Cold War. Is she right?
MCMASTER: No, she's not right. And I think the reason she's not right is that the
classical deterrence theory, how does that apply to a regime like the regime in North Korea?
A regime that engages in unspeakable brutality against its own people? A regime that poses a
continuous threat to the its neighbors in the region and now may pose a threat, direct
threat, to the United States with weapons of mass destruction?
McMaster's was spewing nonsense. The same was said about the Soviet Union and China when
they became nuclear weapons states. North Korea just
became one
. Conventional deterrence of both sides has worked with North Korea for decades.
Nuclear deterrence with North Korea will work just as well as it did with the Soviet and
Chinese communists. If North Korea were really not deterrable the U.S. should have nuked it
yesterday to minimize the overall risk and damage. It is the McMaster position that is
ideological and not rational or "grown up" at all.
"There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody
solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in
the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about,
there's no military solution here, they got us."
It was indeed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which "got" the United States and
stopped the U.S. escalation game. It is
wrong
to think
that North Korea
"backed off"
in the recent upheaval about a missile test targeted next to Guam. It was the U.S. that pulled
back from threatening behavior.
Since the
end
of May
the U.S. military trained extensively for decapitation and "preemptive" strikes on
North Korea:
Two senior military officials -- and two senior retired officers -- told NBC News that key to
the plan would be a B-1B heavy bomber attack originating from Andersen Air Force Base in
Guam.
...
Of the 11 B-1 practice runs since the end of May, four have also involved practice bombing at
military ranges in South Korea and Australia.
In response to the B-1B flights North Korea published plans to launch a missile salvo next
to the U.S. island of Guam from where those planes started. The announcement
included a hidden
offer
to stop the test if the U.S. would refrain from further B-1B flights. A deal was made
during
secret negotiations
. Since then no more B-1B flights took place and North Korea
suspended
its Guam test plans. McMaster lost and the sane people, including Steve Bannon,
won.
But what about Bannon's "ethno-nationalist" ideology?
Isn't he responsible
for the
right-wing nutters of Charlottesville conflict? Isn't he one of them?
He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it:
"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too
much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."
"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.
Bannon sees China as an economic enemy and wants to escalate an economic conflict with it.
He is said to be against the nuclear deal with Iran. The generals in Trump's cabinet are all
anti-Iran hawks. As Bannon now turns out to be a realist on North Korea, I am not sure what
real position on Iran is.
Domestically Bannon is pulling the Democrats into the very trap I had several times warned
against:
"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want
them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go
with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
This worked well during the presidential election and might continue to work for Trump. As
long as the Democrats do not come up with, and fight for, sane economic polices they will
continue to lose elections. The people are not interested in LGBT access to this or that
bathroom. They are interested in universal healthcare, in personal and economic security. They
are unlikely to get such under Bannon and Trump. But, unlike the Democrats, the current White
House crew at least claim to have plans to achieve it.
Posted by b on August 16, 2017 at 11:51 PM |
Permalink
A couple of very interesting links from the last thread were the one to the Bannon article,
and also the link to the Carter/NK article.
Kim Jong Un, 3rd generation like his father and grandfather leader of NK. From what I have
read this is a cultural thing t hat predates communism and the Japanese occupation prior. Many pictures of Kim show an overweight youngster amongst gaunt hungry looking
generals.
Gave the impression of a spoilt kid simply handed power. Not going to the May 9 parade in
Russia when invited also gave the impression he was paranoid.
But looking at things now, rather than a spoilt paranoid kid, perhaps someone trained from
an early age for leadership, and perhaps rather than being paranoid (Russia/China), perhaps a
leader that finds it more important to create a deterrence against the US. Third generation at
war with the US and his seen his father was fucked over when trying to make a deal with the US. NK's nuke and missile tech have come a long way in the few short years Kim Jong Un has been
in power.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kim Jong Un and Trump have a meet one day.
b said: "The people are not interested in LGBT access to this or that bathroom. They are
interested in universal healthcare, in personal and economic security. They are unlikely to
get such under Bannon and Trump. But, unlike the Democrats, the current White House crew at
least claim to have plans to achieve it."
"There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody
solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in
the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about,
there's no military solution here, they got us."
Doesn't that at least show Bannon as the adult in the room?
I would say so.
So lets start parsing this economic nationalism that Bannon is making happen with Trump.
Economic nationalism is a term used to describe policies which are guided by the idea of
protecting domestic consumption, labor and capital formation, even if this requires the
imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labour, goods and capital. It
is in opposition to Globalisation in many cases, or at least on questions the unrestricted
good of Free trade. It would include such doctrines as Protectionism, Import substitution,
Mercantilism and planned economies.
Examples of economic nationalism include Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers",
Malaysia's imposition of currency controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's
controlled exchange of the Yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs and devaluation in
the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect
domestic steel production.
Think about what a trade war with China would do. It would crash the world economy as
China tried to cash in on it US Treasury holdings with the US likely defaulting......just one
possible scenario.
At least now, IMO, the battle for a multi-polar (finance) world is out in the open.....let
the side taking by nations begin. I hope Bannon is wrong about the timing of potential global
power shifting and the US loses its empire status.
Bannon thinks the bombast on display between the Kim and Trump has been "a sideshow". The
real show, on the other hand, has nothing to do with the dramatic sparring between the two
leaders. The Mother Of All Policies, according to Bannon, is an all-bets-on trade war with
China, whose endgame admits to only one outcome,--that is to say-- that only one hegemon will
remain standing at the end of this struggle.
There can be only one King-of-the-Hill. But where is the Greek Chorus?--the prophetic
warning that goes by the name of necessity?-- that tries to ward off hubris? "One must never
subscribe to absurdities" (it was Camus who aptly said that).
I had read this before; interesting to say the least.
Truth be told, I'd never heard of Bannon prior to Trumps election and still know little about
him.
Politics aside Bannon seems a straight shooter; I certainly can't argue his statement re:
what would happen if we attacked NK. His statement is echo'd by many long before today.
I do plan to start paying attention from this point forward.
Oh, and I did read that Trump is afraid of Bannon, but don't remember the reason stated.
"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too
much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."
"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.
No, whoever planned that "United Right" rally walked Trump into the trap.
As Trump was incapable to disassociate himself clearly from people who protest against the
take down of a statue of General Lee. Trump now owns the race issue.
Steve Bannon is
a
fascist
. That does not mean he is stupid.
The generals are clearly dangerous. They have the power to walk everybody to world war
III. Trump has pledged to spend even more on the US military, the military already has the
highest spending world wide. The generals don't want to admit that they cannot solve
anythings by military power.
Trump going off script in that press conference into a stream of consciousness was bad. He
reminded everybody of their rambling demented great-grandfather. He tried to get the
discussion to economic issues, he did not succeed.
In stepped more lies and garbage, this time more fake than the other, with chaos theory and
psychological warfare organizations drowning in capabilities from the overfunded phony war
on terror and too much time on their hands now lending their useless talents toward
disinforming the general public.
The result has been a divided US where "alternative facts" fabricated for a vulnerable
demographic now competes with the "mainstream" now termed, and I believe rightly so, "fake
news" to support different versions of a fictional narrative that resembles reality only in
the most rarified and oblique manner.
...
America has left itself open to dictatorship. It long since gave up its ability to
govern itself, perhaps it was the central bank, the Federal Reserve in 1913 or more recent
erosions of individual power such as the Citizens United Supreme Court decision of 2005.
Whatever milestone one chooses, the remains of democratic institutions in the US are now
difficult to find.
What we are left with is what increasingly seems to be factions, mistakenly defined as
"right" or "far right" jockeying for control over America's military, and with that,
control over the planet itself.
You see, whoever controls the American military controls the world, unless a power bloc
appears that can challenge, well, challenge what? If the Pentagon controls America's
military and the Pentagon is controlled by a cabal of religious extremists as many claim or
corporate lackeys as most believe, then where does the world stand?
Then again, if Trump and his own Republican congress are at war over impeachment, and I
assure you, little else is discussed in Washington, two sides of the same coin, servants of
different masters, has all oversite of the newfound military power over American policy
disappeared?
Bannon can be perfectly mature, adult and realist on some points and be totally blinded by
biases on others - him wanting total economic war against China is proof enough. So I don't
rule out that he has a blind spot over Iran and wants to get rid of the regime. I mean, even
Trump is realist and adult in a few issues, yet is an oblivious fool on others.
Kind of hard to find someone who's always adult and realist, actually. You can only hope to
pick someone who's more realist than most people. Or build a positronic robot and vote for
him.
More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive
publication (the cover lines on whose first two issues after Trump's election were
"Resisting Trump" and "Containing Trump") and assume that a possible convergence of views
on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.
The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is
also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the
press. He's probably the most media-savvy person in America.
I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the
ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump's
reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of using
Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump's
base.
He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it:
"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too
much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more."
Explanation a) He wants to explain the climbdown of his boss on North Korea.
Not really helpful to Trump.
b) He wants to save his reputation as the association with the KKK and White Suprematists
has become toxic.
I think Bannon is an authentic economic nationalist, and one that Trump feels is good counsel
on those matters. If this is so, then Bannon cannot be trying to provoke a trade war with
China, since that would be an economic catastrophe for the US (and China and the rest of the
world). I'm hoping he's playing bad cop and eventually Trump will play good cop in
negotiations for more investment by China in the US and other goodies in exchange for 'well,
not much' from the US. Similar to what the US dragged out of Japan in the 80s nd 90s.
psychohistorian at 4: 'as China tried to cash in on it US Treasury holdings with the US
likely defaulting...'
as a sovereign currency issuer of that size the usa can not run out of dollars
to default on their obligations would be a voluntary mistake the federal reserve will
avoid
meanwhile the chinese are investing in africa and other countries securing their position in
the world
c | Aug 17, 2017 6:59:32 AM | 17
as a sovereign currency issuer of that size the usa can not run out of dollars
to default on their obligations would be a voluntary mistake the federal reserve will
avoid
meanwhile the chinese are investing in africa and other countries securing their position in
the world
Very good; and I agree with your POV; the usa can not run out of dollars.
And therein lies its power; a very dangerous situation that I do not think the world is
equipped to deal with in toto...
Every political swindler today starts off by pretending Trump won the election instead of the
Electoral College, including Steve Bannon. It is the Republican Party, not Trump and his
Trumpery who holds majorities in the House, the Senate and the nation's statehouses. Anybody
who wants to think that "economic nationalism" will crush the Democrats has forgotten that
Trump lost the popular vote on this ticket.
It appears that as a purely nominal Republican, an owner in a hostile takeover, Trump has
no qualms about trashing the system. Practically speaking, this is the very opposite of
draining the swamp, which requires effective leadership.
Kim Jong Un, 3rd generation like his father and grandfather leader of NK. From what I have
read this is a cultural thing that predates communism and the Japanese occupation prior.
But looking at things now, rather than a spoilt paranoid kid, perhaps someone trained
from an early age for leadership, and perhaps rather than being paranoid (Russia/China),
perhaps a leader that finds it more important to create a deterrence against the US.
Posted by: Peter AU 1 | Aug 17, 2017 1:05:52 AM | 1
OR, looked at another way:
Perhaps the gurning wunderkind Kim's ascent to the North Korean Throne was completely
predictable and was predicted a long time ago, and plans were set in motion to ensure that he
was co-opted as a kid, and now works with the US to help counter the rising Chinese
power.
Perhaps the alleged face-off Trump, Kim and the western MSM treated the world to over the
past while, was merely nothing but a pre-scripted choreographic display, a piece of theater
agreed upon beforehand by all participants except China
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kim Jong Un and Trump have a meet one day.
I wouldn't be surprised if Kim Jong Un and Trump actually play for the same side.
Every political swindler today starts off by pretending Trump won the election instead of
the Electoral College, i
Posted by: steven t johnson | Aug 17, 2017 8:18:55 AM | 19
Actually as far as I can tell the real political swindlers are the ones who refuse to
acknowledge that a US Presidential election is, (and has been for nearly whole time the US
has been in existence, which is more than 200 years for those who have problems keeping track
of such simple matters) decided NOT by the popular vote but by the results of the Electoral
College voting.
Anybody who wants to think that "economic nationalism" will crush the Democrats has
forgotten that Trump lost the popular vote on this ticket.
Again, just to repeat the actual reality regarding US Presidential elections: They are
decided on the basis of Electoral Collage voting and NOT on the basis of the popular vote, as
political swindlers would now like everyone to believe.
He is doubling down now defending General Lee statues as beautiful. He is doing the same
strategy as he did in his duel with Hillary Clinton when everybody thought he was insane,
playing to his core Republican base to make sure Republicans have to stay in line or face a
primary challenge.
Breitbart is doing the same threatening "Republican traitors".
The problem with this strategy is that Trump won because Hillary Clinton was so unpopular,
because their pollsters outsmarted Nate Silver and Co. and possibly because she was a
woman.
But Republicans who have to pretend they are religious right wing nuts in the primaries,
then have to appeal to independents to win the actual election.
So they cannot go against Trump but cannot defend him. They are paralysed.
That what it comes down to. That the main aim of the president of the United States is to
paralyze the party he hijacked.
They are decided on the basis of Electoral Collage voting and NOT on the basis of the
popular vote, as political swindlers would now like everyone to believe
indeed, though, speaking of political swindlers,
there's
mucho
evidence
that Trump may have won the popular vote as well.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Aug 17, 2017 8:18:55 AM | 19
Every political swindler today starts off by pretending Trump won the election instead
of the Electoral College, including Steve Bannon. It is the Republican Party, not Trump and
his Trumpery who holds majorities in the House, the Senate and the nation's statehouses.
Anybody who wants to think that "economic nationalism" will crush the Democrats has forgotten
that Trump lost the popular vote on this ticket.
Have you read the Constitution of the USA? The Electoral College elects the President by
the rank and file voters electing the Electors to the College on November election day.
That's how the system works.
Ask Al Gore; he won the popular vote.
Oh and btw, the Hillary won the popular 2016 vote meme. Take a look at Detroit, MI heavy
Democrats' precints - more votes than voters - and the millions of illegal aliens' vote in
California who voted after the invite of Obama.
Trump won the election. Period. End of story. Done. Finished. Get over it and get on with
your life. He didn't compete to win the popular vote. He competed and campaigned to win the
election. Advice to Democrats - nominate a candidate beside a senile old neocon woman who is
corrupt to her ugly core, and then maybe you can beat a former reality show star.
The problem with this strategy is that Trump won because Hillary Clinton was so unpopular,
because their pollsters outsmarted Nate Silver and Co. and possibly because she was a
woman.
Posted by: somebody | Aug 17, 2017 9:45:00 AM | 23
Nope - first part of the sentence is correct but the rest of is just you, as usual, repeating
crap you found on the Internet and then repeating it here pretending it is profound and that
you actually understand what you are talking about, which you clearly don't as evidenced by
the fact that you then go on to reference Nate Silver whose fame was never anything but media
created hype with little or nothing to back it up.
Silver's feet of clay were evident long before the latest Prez election. It became obvious
that his alleged electoral statistical prowess rested as much on luck as anything else. Lucky
in prediction when it came to the 2008 election but by 2010 things started to go wrong but
the media ignored his feet of clay and kept hyping him as a stats genius.
By the time 2016 rolled round Silver was exposed for the lucky fraud he is.
The real truth of Hillarys inability to win lies not in her being female as you and many
others disingenuously (at best) try to claim, but simply lies in the fact that she is a
thoroughly unpleasant person with a complete lack of charisma and a massive sense of
entitlement.
Blacks and others, minorities generally and independents, who came out in droves for the
Obama elections simply refused to go and vote for her.
The Republican vote however changed very little - pretty much the exact same demographic
voted republican as voted for Romney.
Trump won partly because of Clintons massive hubris in refusing to campaign in several key
states. Cambridge analytical were not required to give him the win, no matter what you read,
without analysing it, elsewhere on the web and are now repeating here in an effort to pretend
you know what you are talking about.
CA probably helped somewhat but it unlikely that they were central to the win. Clintons
hubris and her complete lack of charisma, ensured low black/minority/independent for her in
key states, especially those where she had refused to even bother to campaign, which was
enough to seal the win for Trump
You simply repeating crap you heard on the net and pretending that if you say it in an
authoritative fashion it will magically become true, just ends up making you look completely
clueless, as usual. (or dishonest)
@ Everybody who bought into the MSM Steve Bannon promoted white supremacy and through
Breitbart. Suggested you read his world view expressed in remarks at Human Dignity Institute,
Vatican Conference 2014
Posted by: likklemore | Aug 17, 2017 10:51:54 AM | 28
Anyone with any intelligence would be wise to treat with great caution anything Bannon
claims in public interviews about himself or his alleged political beliefs,
US politics is a great big clusterfeck - worse than ever, which is hard to believe. Bannon's big liar. He did heaps to create this very situation with the White
Supremacists. Of course the Democrats are worse than useless. All they're doing is presenting themselves
as "We're not Trump" and whining about Putin. All of them are clowns. Every last one. Including the so-called "Generals." Worthless.
"Since then no more B-1B flights took place and North Korea suspended its Guam test
plans."
but: "Yesterday (...) two US B-1 strategic bombers, operating with Japanese fighter jets,
conducted exercises to the southwest of the Korean Peninsula." says WSWS. ?
everything about the usa today is divisive... i can't imagine the usa being happy if this
didn't continue until it's demise..the 2 party system hasn't worked out very well as i see
it.. failed experiment basically.. oh well..
If I remember correctly, wasn't it both the President Elect and the Republican Congressmen
who won clear majorities in nearly 80 percent of congressional districts? Presuming an issue
like the gerrymandering of districts wasn't significant, that's a far more legitimate victory
than an extra million Democrats voting in California (determining the future of national
policy). I'm not a fan of the Republicans, but denying the short term efficiency of 'populist
rhetoric' isn't helping the left win any substantial electoral victories in the future.
Good Lord. Can't people read anymore? The election is all about the EC. Keep talking and
running for the popular vote, and Trump will keep winning the Electoral College. You either
want to win or you don't. I hope you keep preaching the popular vote personally.
Keep the proles spilt in their little "identity groups", their micro-tribes, and continue
building the Kleoptocracy/Prison/Military State while the dumbed down demos are busy hunting
micro-aggressions/fighting gender & race wars etc etc
During the last 5 Prez Election cycles the population spilt on utterly retarded lines such
as Gay-marriage, Gender-free toilets etc. All this while the US fought or financed numerous
very expensive wars in the Middle East ukraine etc, resulting hundreds of thousands of lives
lost.
The 2008 elections had one of the highest ever voter turnout rates for the Democrats and
the 2016 elections had one of the lowest ever. The turnout rates (abysmal if ever compared to
voter turnout rates in Germany and Japan) easily explain the initial victory and the eventual
defeat, not 'Detroit fraud' or 'the millions of illegals' voting in your head. Racial
gerrymandering against black voters in the Southern States is a far more real issue.
somwbody @ 12: Good link thanks..Interesting read about "The Forth Turning"
psycho @ 5: good link also..
WJ @ 27 said:" Advice to Democrats - nominate a candidate beside a senile old neocon woman
who is corrupt to her ugly core, and then maybe you can beat a former reality show star."
Yep, so-called "Russian hacking" wasn't the problem, HRC was the problem...
Just Sayin' @ 41 said:"It should by now be clear to anyone paying attention that while both
Bannon & Trump certainly TALK a lot, they seem to actually do very little."
Kinda' waitin' myself to see all those "accomplishments"....
I understand and respect your point, but I was responding to the initial comment's
implicit argument on public opinion: "a common argument is the
lower-middle-to-upper-middle-class social base of the Republicans is less receptive to the
short term effects of Protectionist policy and this would reduce political morale, as well as
grassroots and voting organization. However, the Democrats 'won the popular vote.' So, it's
'obvious' in saying the classless definition of 'the American people' oppose this Republican
policy, and naturally, the social base of the Republican Party isn't especially relevant to
consider when organizing voters and grassroots movements for a renewed Democratic Party."
To be fair, I think like the early Unionist and Communist circles, and presume public
opinion translates to expressions of grassroots politics between conflicting classes (more so
than it actually happens in American class society).
If one proceeds on the assumption that politics in the United States closely follows themes,
scripts and production values pioneered by WWF, then all becomes clear. It's simply
pro-wrestling on a global scale with nuclear weapons and trillions of dollars in prize money.
@42 just sayin'.. yes to all you say - it is quite sad actually.. not sure of the way out at
this point, short of complete rebellion in the streets which looks like a longs ways off at
this point..
not sure of the way out at this point, short of complete rebellion in the streets which
looks like a longs ways off at this point..
Posted by: james | Aug 17, 2017 2:58:51 PM | 49
Most of the younger generation seem to be much to busy, obsessing over non-existent things
like "Micro-agressions" or "hetero-normative cis-gender oppression", to pay attention to, let
alone acknowledge, the enormous global macro-aggressions their own country is engaged in on a
world-wide scale.
But, unlike the Democrats, the current White House crew at least claim to have plans to
achieve it.
Is there a "don't" missing from that sentence?
I must disagree that DPRK nuclear missiles are a qualitatively similar threat to those
possessed by the Soviet Union and China. DPRK's guiding
Suche
ideology is a literal
cult that goes far beyond the cult-of-personality that held sway over the Soviet Union and
China when Stalin and Mao ruled. And by the time the Soviets developed delivery capabilities
Stalin was dead and his cult was done. By the time the Chinese developed delivery
capabilities Mao was declining into figurehead status and Zhou Enlai, who as commander of the
PLA realized how weak China really was militarily, had no illusions about what would happen
in a military confrontation with the US. But DPRK is still ruled by a cult that believes the
Kims are ordained with supernatural powers that allowed them to drive the Japanese off the
peninsula then fight off an American "invasion." They truly don't mention the role of the
Soviets and the Chinese in saving their bacon. In terms of face-saving, the Kims have set the
bar pretty high for themselves by fostering their cult. Their legitimacy would be threatened
if their statecraft as rational actors undermined their Suche cult.
DPRK have been rogue actors against ROK and Japan out of sheer spitefulness, fully
exploiting the umbrella provided by the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Assistance
with China. They have done extraterritorial kidnappings and murders not for perceived
strategic reasons but merely to intimidate. DPRK has pointedly refused to enter talks for a
formal peace between them and the ROK. Those kinds of motives do not bespeak of someone who
can be trusted with nukes.
Bannon is someone whom I hold quite responsible for contributing to the rise of White
Supremacy in the USA, which I consider a clear and present danger. Bannon's dismissive hand
waving yesterday is meant to dissemble. Guess some are willing to buy what he was selling
yesterday. Not me.
What are your reasons for believing this about Bannon? What counts as contributing, and
how did you come to your decision?
It's not that I don't believe you. It's rather important to establish in what way his
words (whether the ones you found or the recent ones in
American Prospect
) are lies
or misdirection, so that I, and anyone interested, can evaluate this for ourselves and come
to similar or different conclusions.
I don't think Bannon wants a "trade" war with China but he is right that there is an economic
war going on. The "silk roads" and the various new organisations that the Chinese-Russians
have set up, (Major Banks, "Swift" equivalent, Glossnass satellites, card payment systems,
industrial independence, and food self-sufficiency etc), plus the use of currencies other
than the dollar - are all examples of a break-away from a US-EU domination.
However, they have not suddenly introduced everything at once to "bring the US house
down". Why? One possible reason could be that they are expecting the US to collapse anyway.
Another is that viable alternatives also take time to set up.
b has mentioned the "grown ups" v the Idealogues". The impact of the military on the
economic war seems to be underestimated. How much longer can the US afford the more than
trillion dollars per year of the "visible" arms? This does not include hidden costs
("Intelligence agencies and pork). Nor does it include costs borne by other countries. ie.
Italy has about 80 US bases (the most in the EU) and about 77 nuclear warheads on its soil.
Italy PAYS for those bases, and even that does not include infrastucture (roads, increased
airport capacity, sewage, water mains, etc) which are paid for by the Italians themselves.
Other countries will have similar systems. Some like Kuwait are "paying" back the amounts
spent on arms for example.
The total cost is astronomical.
A brief reminder the USSR collapsed because of massive overspending on arms and military
projects - leaving the rest of the economy in the lurch. Presumably the Chinese and Russians
are expecting the same thing to happen again.
(Aside - yes, you can print dollars as a sovereign state, but printing roubles didn't help
the soviets either)
So McMasters and the others are in fact just spoilt brats who think that the good times are
forever.
----
One example of the new "bluff-calling" cheaper method of economic warfare (*NK is the
another) were the recent NATO/US manoeuvres in Georgia (country) on the anniversary of the
Georgian invasion of South Ossetia. The number of troops and means involved would have been
enough to carry out a "surprise" attack this time too. The Russians - sent in Putin, who
declared that the Russians supported S.Ossetia and were ready to deal with any threat -
exactly as they did "last" time. Cost? One plane trip.
(*The NK threat by the US would have seen about 40'000 men from S. Korea and Japan sent
against about 700'000 motivated local troops and massive artillery arrays. It was a
non-starter, even with nukes)
You are forgetting to mention the main sticking point to talks is our refusal to halt our
annual̶d̶e̶f̶e̶n̶s̶i̶v̶e̶
̶d̶r̶i̶l̶l̶s̶ invasion practice before they will come to
the table. At least from what I read.
Even with China's international financial position growing more robust with SWIFT
independence, AIDB, the New Silk Road and such, they still have an interest in the
Dollar-based western financial system as long as they can make money off of it. They are not
going to shoot themselves in the foot by deliberately causing it to collapse. They might even
prop it up in a crisis, but I suspect they would drive a hard bargain.
Thirdeye says, "But DPRK is still ruled by a cult that believes the Kims are ordained with
supernatural powers." What is American Exceptionalism?
MCMASTER: Says classic deterrence strategy won't work with NK.
"Deterrence is a strategy intended to dissuade an adversary from taking an action not yet
started, or to prevent them from doing something that another state desires."
Classic deterrence strategy IS working for NK perfectly.
What I base my analysis of Bannon is his leadership at Bretibart which may or may not be
continuing right now. Just read Breitbart if you think Bannon isn't fully behind the White
Supremacists rising up right now.
The idea that people (a people) have to suffer a big war in order to cleanse themselves
from moral depravity is fascism pure and simple as who should force people to do this but a
dictator.
All one has to do to know what Bannon's position on Iran is to read Breitbart on any given
day. Unless we are supposed to believe that Bannon's opinions are not reflected by the
website he ran for four years. Bannon is for war against Islam in general, there is nothing
"realist" about his foreign policy.
That's a different issue from entering talks for a formal peace with with ROK. DPRK has
been refusing that for years. Did you ever consider that DPRK's constant saber rattling
against ROK was what lent impetus to US exercises in the region in the first place? The US
knows that China would not tolerate a US invasion of DPRK. Why take the risk of invading
across great defensive terrain when you can simply destroy?
57 Madhatter67
Thirdeye says, "But DPRK is still ruled by a cult that believes the Kims are ordained
with supernatural powers." What is American Exceptionalism?
That's a dumb analogy and a pathetic attempt at deflection. Criticize American
Exceptionalism all you want, but don't compare it to a supernaturalist cult. That's just
stupid.
DPRK has a history of doing whatever they think they can get away with, exploiting their
treaty with China. If their delusional
Suche
ideology leads them to miscalculate or
paints them into a corner trying to prop it up, it could lead to war.
If there's any bright spot in the whole picture it's China's chilly stance towards DPRK
after recent events. The excesses of DPRK's ruling cult have occurred largely because they
figured China had their back. But China's regional interests have changed dramatically over
the past 30 years. ROK is no longer a competitive threat to China and is economically more
important to China than DPRK ever was. DPRK's military power is of much less benefit to China
than it was in the past. It might even be considered a liability.
61 Stonebird
It wouldn't be cash, it would be be assets and/or the means of controlling them. Big
Chinese money is already coming into the west coast of the US and Canada. Oh well, we fucked
things up here; maybe the Chinese will do a better job.
Bannon is against the nuclear deal, and is one of the top people in the administration
arguing for Trump to move the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Bannon has been
cited as promoting Sheldon Adelson's Israel policy in meetings with Trump.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/pro-abbas-lauder-hawkish-adelson-battling-to-influence-trump-on-mideast/
If anything Bannon/Breitbart push an even harder line on Israel than most politicians and
media do.
First of all, I will now declare that I am 99% confused! So please let me review the 1% that
comes through my little keyhole. What has been said?
/~~~~~~~~~~
<< = Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 11:01:18 AM | 30
Anyone with any intelligence would be wise to treat with great caution anything Bannon
claims in public interviews about himself or his alleged political beliefs,
\~~~~~~~~~~
Well sure! The guy's a political operative -- One does not get to be a political operative
by being some kind of a Dudly Do-Right. Damn.
@12... "Bannon is a fascist" I'm not so sure. Mussolini defined fascism as being an
alliance of corporate and state powers... but Bannon (and most of his followers) have no
trust in the corporate sector as they [the corporate sector] are to a large degree Globalists
- they used the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would
even call them traitors. So you could call him a Nationalist.
\~~~~~~~~~~
Well since we can't believe anything from Bannon... And aside from that I am sick of
hearing Mussolini's definition of fascism -- After all, he was a psycho-villain -- so why
believe it?!
UNTIL WE HAVE STRATEGIC HEDGE SIMPLE SCORE VOTING WE WILL BE SADDLED WITH THE TWO-PARTY
"SYSTEM" (really only one party). Who cares if we really have no choice whatsoever. We are
held hostage to the false alternatives of the vast legion of the election methods
cognoscenti.
@35, please refer to post 69. If Bannon was not a Zionist, he would not have ran a site which
brags of being conceived in Israel and which pushes a harder line on Israel than almost any
other, and he would not be promoting Adelson's Israel policy within the administration.
Bannon makes sense. That must be why many want him gone especially the neocons. As to North
Korea, the US should have admitted "facts on the ground" long ago and worked to sign the
official end of the war and work to get the two Koreas talking and working together.
"That's a different issue from entering talks for a formal peace with with ROK. DPRK has been
refusing that for years."
I doubt any substantial transcripts from early talks will ever be released, so whoever had
diplomats offering the 'fairest' compromises for terms of an early framework (resulting in a
later settlement) cannot be known (regarding specifics).
If I remember correctly, there has been at least three Chinese-sponsored peace conferences
(on Korea) since 2007, where the general position of the U.S. was: North Korea had to freeze
total nuclear production, accept existing and additional (U.N.) verification missions, and
dismantle all warheads PRIOR to the signing of any peace treaty. How is demanding
unconditional surrender not intransigence? Are we going to just pretend the United States
hadn't sponsored military coups in Venezuela and Honduras and hadn't invaded Iraq and Libya
(in a similar time frame)?
During peace talks, any terms are argued, refused, and eventually compromised (usually
over years and sometimes over decades). Why presume the United States and South Korea had the
fairest offers and general settlements in a handful of conferences (especially when we have
no transcripts)?
"Did you ever consider that DPRK's constant saber rattling against ROK was what lent
impetus to US exercises in the region in the first place?"
You're presuming your case and not giving specific information on what you might know.
Personally, I don't know who 'started it' (I would guess Japan 'started it' by forcing
through the Protectorate Treaty of 1905, or the United States 'started it' by forcing through
the Amity and Commerce Treaty of 1858), but if North Korea isn't testing missiles near Guam
and the United States isn't flying specific planes over South Korea, a compromise WAS made
this last week, and more can be made to ensure peace.
"... Expectations that Trump's ouster will restore normalcy ignore the very factors that first handed him the Republican nomination (with a slew of competitors wondering what hit them) and then put him in the Oval Office (with a vastly more seasoned and disciplined, if uninspiring, opponent left to bemoan the injustice of it all). ..."
"... Not all, but many of Trump's supporters voted for him for the same reason that people buy lottery tickets: Why not? In their estimation, they had little to lose. Their loathing of the status quo is such that they may well stick with Trump even as it becomes increasingly obvious that his promise of salvation -- an America made "great again" -- is not going to materialize. ..."
"... Yet those who imagine that Trump's removal will put things right are likewise deluding themselves. To persist in thinking that he defines the problem is to commit an error of the first order. Trump is not cause, but consequence. ..."
"... the election of 2016 constituted a de facto referendum on the course of recent American history. That referendum rendered a definitive judgment: the underlying consensus informing U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War has collapsed. Precepts that members of the policy elite have long treated as self-evident no longer command the backing or assent of the American people. Put simply: it's the ideas, stupid. ..."
"... "Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As the long twilight struggle was finally winding down, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, novelist John Updike's late-twentieth-century Everyman , pondered that question. ..."
"... Unfettered neoliberalism plus the unencumbered self plus unabashed American assertiveness: these defined the elements of the post-Cold-War consensus that formed during the first half of the 1990s -- plus what enthusiasts called the information revolution. The miracle of that "revolution," gathering momentum just as the Soviet Union was going down for the count, provided the secret sauce that infused the emerging consensus with a sense of historical inevitability. ..."
"... The three presidents of the post-Cold-War era -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -- put these several propositions to the test. Politics-as-theater requires us to pretend that our 42nd, 43rd, and 44th presidents differed in fundamental ways. In practice, however, their similarities greatly outweighed any of those differences. Taken together, the administrations over which they presided collaborated in pursuing a common agenda, each intent on proving that the post-Cold-War consensus could work in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. ..."
"... To be fair, it did work for some. "Globalization" made some people very rich indeed. In doing so, however, it greatly exacerbated inequality , while doing nothing to alleviate the condition of the American working class and underclass. ..."
"... I never liked Obama, but I don't think he has personal animus against Russia, Syria, Iran, Libya, or Palestinians. But given who was looking over his shoulder, he had to make things difficult for those nations, and that is why leaders of those nations and Obama came to hate one another. As for North Korea, much of the tensions wouldn't exist if US hadn't threatened or invaded 'axis of evil' nations and forced S. Korea to carry out joint exercises to prepare for invasion. ..."
"... Same with Trump. I seriously doubt if Trump has personal animus against Syrians, Russians, Iranians, Palestinians, and etc. But who is looking over his shoulder? So, he has to hate the same people that Obama had to hate. ..."
If we have, as innumerable commentators assert, embarked upon the Age of Trump, the defining feature
of that age might well be the single-minded determination of those horrified and intent on ensuring
its prompt termination. In 2016, TIME magazine chose Trump as its
person of the year
. In 2017, when it comes to dominating the news, that "person" might turn out to be a group -- all
those fixated on cleansing the White House of Trump's defiling presence.
Egged on and abetted in every way by Trump himself, the anti-Trump resistance has made itself
the Big Story. Lies, hate, collusion, conspiracy, fascism: rarely has the everyday vocabulary of
American politics been as ominous and forbidding as over the past six months. Take resistance rhetoric
at face value and you might conclude that Donald Trump is indeed the fifth horseman of
the Apocalypse
, his presence in the presidential saddle eclipsing all other concerns. Pestilence, War, Famine,
and Death will just have to wait.
The unspoken assumption of those most determined to banish him from public life appears to be
this: once he's gone, history will be returned to its intended path, humankind will breathe a collective
sigh of relief, and all will be well again. Yet such an assumption strikes me as remarkably wrongheaded -- and not merely because, should Trump prematurely depart from office, Mike Pence will succeed him.
Expectations that Trump's ouster will restore normalcy ignore the very factors that first handed
him the Republican nomination (with a slew of competitors wondering what hit them) and then put him
in the Oval Office (with a vastly more seasoned and disciplined, if uninspiring, opponent left to
bemoan the injustice of it all).
Not all, but many of Trump's supporters voted for him for the same reason that people buy
lottery tickets: Why not? In their estimation, they had little to lose. Their loathing of the status
quo is such that they may well stick with Trump even as it becomes increasingly obvious that his
promise of salvation -- an America made "great again" -- is not going to materialize.
Yet those who imagine that Trump's removal will put things right are likewise deluding themselves.
To persist in thinking that he defines the problem is to commit an error of the first order. Trump
is not cause, but consequence.
For too long, the cult of the presidency has provided an excuse for treating politics as a melodrama
staged at four-year intervals and centering on hopes of another Roosevelt or Kennedy or Reagan appearing
as the agent of American deliverance. Donald Trump's ascent to the office once inhabited by those
worthies should demolish such fantasies once and for all.
How is it that someone like Trump could become president in the first place? Blame sexism, Fox
News, James Comey, Russian meddling, and Hillary's failure to visit Wisconsin all you want, but a
more fundamental explanation is this: the election of 2016 constituted a de facto referendum
on the course of recent American history. That referendum rendered a definitive judgment: the underlying
consensus informing U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War has collapsed. Precepts that members
of the policy elite have long treated as self-evident no longer command the backing or assent of
the American people. Put simply: it's the ideas, stupid.
Rabbit Poses a Question
"Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?" As the long twilight struggle
was finally winding down, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, novelist John Updike's late-twentieth-century
Everyman
, pondered that question. In short order, Rabbit got his answer. So, too, after only perfunctory
consultation, did his fellow citizens.
The passing of the Cold War offered cause for celebration. On that point all agreed. Yet, as it
turned out, it did not require reflection from the public at large. Policy elites professed to have
matters well in hand. The dawning era, they believed, summoned Americans not to think anew, but to
keep doing precisely what they were accustomed to doing, albeit without fretting further about Communist
takeovers or the risks of nuclear Armageddon. In a world where a "
single
superpower " was calling the shots, utopia was right around the corner. All that was needed was
for the United States to demonstrate the requisite confidence and resolve.
Three specific propositions made up the elite consensus that coalesced during the initial decade
of the post-Cold-War era. According to the first, the globalization of corporate capitalism held
the key to wealth creation on a hitherto unimaginable scale. According to the second, jettisoning
norms derived from Judeo-Christian religious traditions held the key to the further expansion of
personal freedom. According to the third, muscular global leadership exercised by the United States
held the key to promoting a stable and humane international order.
Unfettered neoliberalism plus the unencumbered self plus unabashed American assertiveness:
these defined the elements of the post-Cold-War consensus that formed during the first half of the
1990s -- plus what enthusiasts called the information revolution. The miracle of that "revolution,"
gathering momentum just as the Soviet Union was going down for the count, provided the secret sauce
that infused the emerging consensus with a sense of historical inevitability.
The Cold War itself had fostered notable improvements in computational speed and capacity, new
modes of communication, and techniques for storing, accessing, and manipulating information. Yet,
however impressive, such developments remained subsidiary to the larger East-West competition. Only
as the Cold War receded did they move from background to forefront. For true believers, information
technology came to serve a quasi-theological function, promising answers to life's ultimate questions.
Although God might be dead, Americans found in Bill Gates and Steve Jobs nerdy but compelling idols.
More immediately, in the eyes of the policy elite, the information revolution meshed with and
reinforced the policy consensus. For those focused on the political economy, it greased the wheels
of globalized capitalism, creating vast new opportunities for trade and investment. For those looking
to shed constraints on personal freedom, information promised empowerment, making identity itself
something to choose, discard, or modify. For members of the national security apparatus, the information
revolution seemed certain to endow the United States with seemingly unassailable military capabilities.
That these various enhancements would combine to improve the human condition was taken for granted;
that they would, in due course, align everybody -- from Afghans to Zimbabweans -- with American values
and the American way of life seemed more or less inevitable.
The three presidents of the post-Cold-War era -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -- put these several propositions to the test. Politics-as-theater requires us to pretend that our
42nd, 43rd, and 44th presidents differed in fundamental ways. In practice, however, their similarities
greatly outweighed any of those differences. Taken together, the administrations over which they
presided collaborated in pursuing a common agenda, each intent on proving that the post-Cold-War
consensus could work in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.
To be fair, it did work for some. "Globalization" made some people very rich indeed. In doing
so, however, it greatly
exacerbated inequality , while doing nothing to alleviate the condition of the American working
class and underclass.
The emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism improved the status of groups long subjected to
discrimination. Yet these advances have done remarkably little to reduce the alienation and despair
pervading a society suffering from epidemics of
chronic substance abuse ,
morbid obesity ,
teen suicide
, and similar afflictions. Throw in the world's
highest incarceration rate , a seemingly endless appetite for
porn
, urban school systems
mired in permanent crisis, and
mass shootings that occur with metronomic regularity, and what you have is something other than
the profile of a healthy society.
As for militarized American global leadership, it has indeed resulted in various bad actors meeting
richly deserved fates. Goodbye, Saddam. Good riddance, Osama. Yet it has also embroiled the United
States in a series of costly, senseless, unsuccessful, and ultimately counterproductive wars. As
for the vaunted information revolution, its impact has been
ambiguous
at best, even if those with eyeballs glued to their personal electronic devices can't tolerate being
offline long enough to assess the actual costs of being perpetually connected.
In November 2016, Americans who consider themselves ill served by the post-Cold-War consensus
signaled that they had had enough. Voters not persuaded that neoliberal economic policies, a culture
taking its
motto from the Outback steakhouse chain, and a national security strategy that employs the U.S.
military as a global police force were working to their benefit provided a crucial margin in the
election of Donald Trump.
The response of the political establishment to this extraordinary repudiation testifies to the
extent of its bankruptcy. The Republican Party still clings to the notion that reducing taxes, cutting
government red tape, restricting abortion, curbing immigration, prohibiting flag-burning, and increasing
military spending will alleviate all that ails the country. Meanwhile, to judge by the promises contained
in their recently unveiled (and
instantly forgotten ) program for a "Better Deal," Democrats believe that raising the minimum
wage, capping the cost of prescription drugs, and creating apprenticeship programs for the unemployed
will return their party to the good graces of the American electorate.
In both parties embarrassingly small-bore thinking prevails, with Republicans and Democrats equally
bereft of fresh ideas. Each party is led by aging hacks. Neither has devised an antidote to the crisis
in American politics signified by the nomination and election of Donald Trump.
First, abolish the Electoral College. Doing so will preclude any further occurrence of the
circumstances that twice in recent decades cast doubt on the outcome of national elections
and thereby did far more than any foreign interference to undermine the legitimacy of American
politics.
The November numbers indicate that for the time being without the Electoral College, California
and New York will elect our President well into the future.
If Bacevich had really balls, he would cut to the chase and say it like it is.
I think Trump the person doesn't want trouble with Iran, Syria, and Russia. He's a businessman
who wants to do business with the world while protecting US borders and sovereignty. Trump is
anti-Iran because of Jewish Lobby. His peace with Russia was destroyed by the Lobby and its purse-strings
and puppet-strings.
The undeniable fact of the US is it's not a democracy in terms of real power. It is a Jewish
Supremacist Oligarchy. To be sure, there are Jewish critics of Jewish power. Think of Philip Weiss
and others. Technically, US still has rule of law and due process. But in the end, the Power decides.
Look at the anti-BDS bill supported even by Republicans who make a big stink about liberty and
free speech.
California is said to be uber-'progressive', and many grassroots people there are supportive
of BDS. But California elites and whore politicians are anti-BDS and even passed laws against
it. What does that tell you?
Rule of Law is for little people. The Power has Rule of Rule. And if American People, along
with their politicians, seem to schizo, well, what does one expect? They get their info from J-Media
that feed that lies 24/7.
What is often called 'American' is processed mindset, like yellow American singles is bogus
processed 'cheese food'. Because handful of industries control all the media that beam same signals
to over 300 million TV sets in the US, 'Americanism' is processed mind-food. We need more organic
minds. Too many minds have been processed and re-processed by Great Mind Grinder of J-Media.
AB's 10 recommendations remind me of the beauty pageant contestant answering the question about
what she intended to do ."promote world peace".
Actually the beauty queen is being more sincere and realistic. AB's points are very nice sounding,
but he gives us no idea how realistically, he or anyone could achieve them and we are left with
the feeling that he is just grandstanding. Like the beauty queen, he knows that he will never
do much of anything concrete to further these goals, not even if his life or his son' life, depended
on it.
"Without the Cold War, what's the point of being an American?"
Well, Updike speaks from the position of a "universalist"? Did he ever consider that being
an American may not mean standing up for universal ideas, but simply caring for one's own children
and grandchildren? But even from a universalist position the answer seems simple now – not for
Bacevich, but for me. The United States are singled out and unique w.r.t. their First Amendment.
Whereas all other Western countries have succumbed to Bolshevist propaganda and have undermined
freedom of speech, the "Americans" are the only ones to stand up for it. Why, even Damore may
win a lawsuit against Google.
Whoops Colonel, you forgot to add slashing military spending to your list. The USA could cut
its military budget in half and still spend more than Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China combined.
Trump's insane push for more military spending undermines his effort at cutting domestic programs
to balance the budget. Yet Jimmy Dore explains that most Democrats voted boost the military budget
even more than Trump!
It is unfair to depict Trump as a bumpkin. He graduated from an excellent university and used
a few million dollars from Dad's seed money to become a billionaire. Moreover, he defied all odds
to become President of the USA. I challenge all his brilliant critics to run for President in
2020 to prove that is simple.
@Robert Magill The US Constitution would have to be amended to eliminate the Electoral College
by 3/4 of the states ratifying the amendment. The smaller states would never vote to eliminate
their role in electing the president. Nor should they. My respect for Bacevich is waning.
As for militarized American global leadership, it has indeed resulted in various bad actors
meeting richly deserved fates. Goodbye, Saddam. Good riddance, Osama.
Goodbye Saddam?? The implication being that all the death and destruction was somehow worth
it?? You scum, of the most evil *beep* nation on earth! A pox on all of you.
"First, abolish the Electoral College. Doing so will preclude any further occurrence of
the circumstances that twice in recent decades cast doubt on the outcome of national elections
and thereby did far more than any foreign interference to undermine the legitimacy of American
politics."
Yeah, let's trade the consensus of a nation of local communities for the tyranny of the (bi-coastal)
majority. I might give up the EC, however, if the system was replaced by gladiatorial combat to
the death for all who want the job, or, if we're sticking to a two-party system, the decision
can come by pistols at dawn (Good Morning America can't get the nod I hate that Roker chap, and
I don't think Megan Kelly should be anywhere near selection of a President). Real skin in the
game, so to say.
Yeah, bring back the draft. Military service only. We won't end senseless wars unless many
more of our young people actually experience them, and that's not going to happen if they are
picking up litter or emptying bed pans.
More money for public education? We've been doing that for years dude, and we get worse results
as we spend more. There's already too much money in public education. College for all is a mistake,
and in gen snowflake, tell me who isn't deserving. How about serious testing for results and beating
for those who do not achieve them?
Income equality sounds nice, but it's never been had anywhere by taxation. It takes a certain
societal moderation and modesty requiring our ruling elites to not want to be so conspicuous in
their consumption (this in the age of the Rich Kids of Instagram) and to share the wealth through
employment and good wages to their fellow citizens. Good luck with that ever gracing our shores.
Stop yakking about the pseudoscience nay the religion of climate change. Plant some more trees
and take a couple aspirin. Add the costs of global wars for resources to the cost of gas, which
will spike it to $6 per gallon and dissuade a lot of unnecessary driving.
Require all candidates for Federal elective office to be physically neutered, and forbid any
of their progeny for at least three generations as well as any immediate relations closer than
fourth cousin from holding any position of honor, elective office, or Federal employment whatsoever.
Trump or no Trump, things would be much saner without Jewish globalist pressure.
I never liked Obama, but I don't think he has personal animus against Russia, Syria, Iran,
Libya, or Palestinians. But given who was looking over his shoulder, he had to make things difficult
for those nations, and that is why leaders of those nations and Obama came to hate one another.
As for North Korea, much of the tensions wouldn't exist if US hadn't threatened or invaded 'axis
of evil' nations and forced S. Korea to carry out joint exercises to prepare for invasion.
Same with Trump. I seriously doubt if Trump has personal animus against Syrians, Russians,
Iranians, Palestinians, and etc. But who is looking over his shoulder? So, he has to hate the
same people that Obama had to hate.
In the US, politicians must hate according to Jewish neurosis. And that's the problem. We don't
have autonomy of likes and dislikes. Like dogs, we have to like or hate what our master likes
or hates. And Jewish Globalists are elites. The great evil of America is we are forced to HATE
whatever Jewish globalists Hate. It is a culture of Hate. Ironically, the biggest haters accuse
others of hate.
Most of Mr. Bacevich's piece was quite good. Then we got to the Ten-Point Program. A bold,
revolutionary program calling for more of how we got here. What the hell?
@LarryS The US Constitution would have to be amended to eliminate the Electoral College by
3/4 of the states ratifying the amendment. The smaller states would never vote to eliminate their
role in electing the president. Nor should they. My respect for Bacevich is waning. Yes, it is
interesting how smaller states in federations show that they understand and will hold on to their
leverage even when , as in Australia, the people themselves vote on constitutional change.
But why would eliminating the Electoral College allow presidentlal elections to be decided
by the popular vote in California and NY as someone suggested? Aren't the number of electoral
college votes adjusted quite promptly in proportion to population changes?
Here's an anti Imperial Presidency policy for the author to consider and perhaps endorse .
1. Move towards the constitutiobal monarchy or limited presidency parliamentary model by strengthening
the H of R and relying on ordinary human ambition to forward the project;
2. Specifically extend Congressional terms from 2 years to 4 (and perhaps provide lots of public
financing and free publicity to diminish thevcorruption by donors)
3. Enhance the role of Majority leader – indeed facilitate his forming his own Cabinet – and
restrict the amending of budget bills submitted (as the main ones would have to be) by the leader
of the majority – or his nominated Finance spokesperson..
@Wizard of Oz To some extent, but since each state has at least one Representative and two
Senators, there is a bias toward political geography that is difficult to overcome by population.
This is a good thing.
@Wizard of Oz Sorry, should have connected the dots each state's Electors total the same as
their Congressional delegations in House and Senate, and House is capped at 435.
@Wizard of Oz Only with respect to the EC votes corresponding to the number of House Representatives.
From Wikipedia:
"Each state chooses electors, totaling in number to that state's combined total of senators
and representatives."
Each state – irrespective of population – has two senators, so this protects citizens of less
populous states from those in, e.g., California. Part of the Constitutional bargain that makes
for a republic as opposed to a national democracy.
@The Alarmist Sorry, should have connected the dots ... each state's Electors total the same
as their Congressional delegations in House and Senate, and House is capped at 435. Yes, the effect
of adding in the senators is substantial. The two biggest (Democrat) states add just 4 out of
543 to their basic Congressional weighting while the 48 other states add 96/543. Thus 17.6 per
cent against just an extra 0.7 per cent.
Not even Texas would think of supporting the abolition of the Electoral College. A pity yhe excellent
author should be so sloppy as not at least to acknowledge which items on his wish list are pure
fantasy.
"Nominally, the Constitution assigns responsibilities and allocates prerogatives to three co-equal
branches of government."
Oh, dear, I do get tired of this meme.
No, the Constitution does not create "three co-equal branches of government," no matter how
often the phrase is repeated.
The Constitution establishes a legislative branch that, whenever it is sufficiently united
and desirous, has absolute power over the other two branches.
The Congress can remove any member of the other two branches from office, among other powers,
but the countervailing power of the other two branches over Congress, at least per the Constitution,
is very limited indeed.
In most republics and constitutional monarchies, the executive branch has a number of ways
to influence the legisilature, including calling new elections when desired. Our Constitution
has none of that.
Under the Constitution, the Congress is not co-equal. Its supreme.
@gustafus " as we import more and more of the LOW IQ 3rd world – education will be more about
the reasons we don't boink our children siblings and cousins"
Nahh, that would be imposing our Eurocentric values on their vibrant cultures.
@Robert Magill Any citizen of the USA and/or student of its history who writes in the same
essay both that he is a conservative and that he favors abolishing the Electoral College is either
a fool, an unprincipled knave, or most likely both.
@Robert Magill I came in to make the same point and will add that it would be effectively
only two metropolitan areas–LA and NYC.
Whoever would control those cities politically would control the nation politically, economically,
and socially the way Chicago's elites control much of Wisconsin (to use an example recently discussed
at iSteve).
The republic would be ripe for division into two coastal demesnes vying with each other for
power, resources, and serfs (both in the coastal hives and the "flyover states").
What is undermining the legitimacy of American politics isn't the United States Constitution.
It is the countless billions of dollars spend on election campaigning each year. That includes
all corollary expenditures, as on media buys and polling.
Not the kind of polling that involves voting. The kind of polling that Nate Silver does.
Election campaigns engineer infiltration of the public culture at every level–federal, state,
county, municipal, and local–by divisive discourse and methods. These originally were developed
so that merchants could differentiate and sell to the masses soap and junk food brands. Not even
the commodities themselves–but brands of them.
Political campaigning rolls up the worst elements of advertising, PR, propaganda, and opinion
research into one unending tsunami of hostility, division, manufactured conflict, false equivalencies,
forced choices, and sneering tearing-down of what others believe, want, or have built.
The people who create political campaigns for a living–with all the corollary products that
go with that, including the candidate himself/herself–are, like the people who communicate those,
among the biggest parasites in the republic. They literally create positions, opinions, and ideas,
then go out and create the demand for them by whatever means it takes. They produce nothing of
value. They siphon off value and resources and set the conditions where by organic excellence
is drowned in a sea of mass communications.
If the Electoral College were demolished tomorrow, they would have even more unfettered access
to more billions of dollars as Candidate Cool Ranch Dorito vied for an influential and lucrative
sinecure with Candidate Salty Crunchy Triangular Fried Corn Thing.
And thanks to Citizens United, money is free speech, and free speech means carefully
selected, constructed, massaged, spun, and polled speech.
Keeping the campaign-media-finance industrial complex operating is all that matters to these
people. Sounds like Bacevich is one of them. Members of the Pontificating Caste usually are. The
Constitution is a barrier to their aspirations.
The author did a decent job of describing the zeitgeist. But his list of 10 big government
solutions is a riot! The solution is a return to human liberty and acceptance of the reality that
all politics that matter to people is local. But our owners don't like local, they like global,
they like universal, they claim to be supporters of diversity but their diversity if they have
their way looks exactly the same everywhere you go – wow, how diverse. You can be in any major
metropolitan area in the US these days and you find it has the same chain store signage dominating
the landscape, the same stories in the newspapers, the same ideological megaphones spouting (((their)))
doctrines to the masses, the same conformity of expressed opinions (don't say what you really
think if you want to keep your job at xyz corp), the same. And unbeknownst to most Americans who
are quick to thank servicemen for "their service", their actual service is that when are elites
have finally won the entire world will be indistinguishable like US metropolitan areas are today.
There is not a big government solution to these issues, big xxx is the problem. The real question
at least in my mind is if our owners would allow pockets of American style, liberty based pockets
to emerge?
If we could find responsible enough men to do it, we could take back monetary sovereignty from
the federal reserve and start a Bank of America. We have our politicians beginning to sell off
the commons (highways for example) to investors. We can fund that by letting some money creation
occur by being earned into existence rather than loaned into existence. This is explicitly disallowed
in the FEDs charter, and it is not for certain we can find men responsible enough to handle this
task without problems nor is it certain that global finance would not retaliate. But we have a
lot of infrastructure that needs upgrading and maintenance. This would allow some level of exodus
from the metros back to Mayberry if there were jobs. We need a small effective government that
has a long term plan of how we are going to maintain our infrastructure. Presently the elected
children in Washington, short sighted immature bunch they are, put construction money for bridges
in the back of bills recognizing a particular day as "insert bullshit day here day" to make their
fellow child go along with the pork they put is some other garbage bill. This is an awful way
to run a country and the chickens have come home and are roosting. Let the metros continue their
present course of forced conformity via peer shaming and propaganda.
Alarm bells going off in the night? How about Bill Clinton? Robert Dole? Al Gore? George W
Bush? How about the stupendously unqualified mirage of Presidential gravitas, Barrack Obama? his
opponents, the snarling ignoramus from Arizona, John McCain? the leaden corporatist Mitt Romney.
Perhaps we are to understand these names that the Colonel leaves unmentioned as constituting the
"slouching:" But the reason we have arrived at Mar-a-Lago is that the terminally corrupt Democratic
Party chose as their candidate the terminally corrupt, stupendously unqualified former President's
wife. The foresight of our founding Father's saved us from that miserable fate, thank you US Constitution.
But lest we become too nostalgic for a time when our co-equal legislative branch had members who
could assert themselves against the stooge of the moment who the people had installed in the White
House, let us take a moment to ponder the stupendous stupidity of our current body that just recently,
with near unanimity, chose to lump Russia in with Iran and North Korea on its sanctions bill while
producing no evidence of any kind to justify its measure.
@Wizard of Oz Quite right. Though the whole thing started when the "real" job of the congressman
became re-election. Once that was internalized, the rest was pretty much inevitable. As long as
the government is heavily involved with businesses, determining not only their profit rate but
perhaps whether they even survive, they will continue efforts to influence government decisions.
Limiting contribution's primary effect, I suspect, would be to drive the influence-buying underground.
The solution, of course, is to get the government out of business and indeed everything else
to the extent possible.
McGovern thinks that it was Brennan boys who hacked into DNC as a part of conspiracy to implicate Russia and to secure Hillary win.
One of the resons was probably that DNC servers were not well protected and there were other hacks, about whihc NSA know. So the sad
state of DNC internet security needed to be swiped under the carpet and that's why CrowdStike was hired.
NSA created 7 million lines of code for penetration and that includes those that were pablished by Wikileaks and designed to imitate
that attackers are coming (and using the language) from: China, North Korea, Iran and Russia.
Also NSA probably intercepts and keeps all Internet communications for a month or two so if it was a hack NSA knows who did it and
what was stolen
But the most unexplainable part was that fact that FBI was denied accessing the evidence. I always think that thye can dictate that
they need to see in such cases, but obviously this was not the case.
Notable quotes:
"... She couldn't pack a school gymnasium while Trumps rallies were packed with 10's of thousands. ..."
Love the rest of the talk, but no way did Hillary win. No way did she get the popular vote.
The woman was calling for war and reinstating the draft on men and women. She couldn't pack a school gymnasium while Trumps
rallies were packed with 10's of thousands.
At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine
.? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.]
If Trump wants to survive he should FIGHT! He call out the Deep State explicitly, using the words "Deep State." and explaining machinations
to the public. This creates a risk for his life, but still this is the only way he can avoid slow strangulation by Muller.
Notable quotes:
"... In explicit terms Trump should call out the Deep State – he should use the words "Deep State." ..."
"... Mueller is Deep Sate - he is an elite - if he comes up with things that have nothing to do with Russia and the election - Trump
should pardon whoever - case closed. ..."
"... Murmurs have started about a 2nd Special Prosecuter – to investigate the DNC. At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling
Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine .? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.] ..."
"... Lee Stranahan names names [Clinton, McCain, CIA, the Media, Soros....] ..."
In explicit terms Trump should call out the Deep State – he should use the words "Deep State."
Mueller is Deep Sate - he is an elite - if he comes up with things that have nothing to do with Russia and the election
- Trump should pardon whoever - case closed.
Trump should say that right now - put the onus on Mueller to do the right thing and not take down the election over small
nothings.
Peace --- Art
... ... ...
Murmurs have started about a 2nd Special Prosecuter – to investigate the DNC. At the moment, the talk is about DNC scuttling
Bernie. But if it gets going, how long before they get to DNC/Crowdstrike/Ukraine .? [And then there's DWS and the Awan bros.]
Lee Stranahan names names [Clinton, McCain, CIA, the Media, Soros....]
So when you cut through all the steam and the boilerplate, how do they plan to do it so it's
fairer to poor Ukrainians, but the state spends less?
Ah. They plan to
raise the age at which you
qualify for a pension
, doubtless among other money-savers. If the state plays its cards
right, the target demographic wil work all its adult life and then die before reaching
pensionable age. But as usual, we must be subjected to the usual western sermonizing about
how the whole initiative is all about helping people and doing good.
This is borne out in one of the other 'critical reforms' the IMF insisted upon before
releasing its next tranche of 'aid' – a land reform act which would allow Ukraine to
sell off its agricultural land
in the interests of 'creating a market'. Sure: as if.
Land-hungry western agricultural giants like Monsanto are drooling at the thought of
getting their hands on Ukraine's rich black earth
plus a chink in Europe's armor against
GMO crops. Another possible weapon to use against Russia would be the growing of huge volumes
of GMO grain so as to weaken the market for Russian grains.
Another element of the plan to reduce pension obligations is the dismantling of whatever
health care system that remain in the Ukraine. That is a twofer – save money on
providing medical services and shortening the life span. This would be another optimization
of wealth generation for the oligarchs and for those holding Ukraine debt.
I can just see Ukrainian health authorities giving away free cigarettes to patients and their
families next!
That remark was partly facetious and partly serious: life these days in the Ukraine sounds
so surreal that I wouldn't put it past the Ministry of Healthcare of Ukraine to come up with
the most hare-brained "reform" initiatives.
I recall a news story about the adverse effects of a reduction in smoking on the US Social
Security Trust Fund. Those actuaries make those calculations for a living. The trouble with
shortening life spans via cancer is that end-of-life treatment tends to be very expensive
unless
people do not have or have very basic health insurance, then there is a likely
net gain. Alcohol, murder and suicides are generally much more efficient economically. I just
depressed myself.
Something does not add up. Any government expenditure is an economic stimulus. The only
potentially negative aspect is taxation. Since taxation is not excessive and in fact too
small on key layers (e.g. companies and the rich), there is no negative aspect to government
spending on pensions. So we have here narrow-definition accounting BS.
Agree that in a world where the people, represented by their governments, are in charge of
money creation and governments ran their financial systems independently of Wall Street and
Washington, any government spending would be welcomed as stimulating economic production and
development. The money later recirculates back to the government when the people who have
jobs created by government spending pay the money back through purchases of various other
government goods and services or through their taxes.
But in capitalist societies where increasingly banks are becoming the sole creators and
suppliers of money, government spending incurs debts that have to be paid back with interest.
In the past governments also raised money for major public projects by issuing treasury bonds
and securities but that doesn't seem to happen much these days.
Unfortunately also Ukraine is surviving mainly on IMF loans and the IMF certainly doesn't
want the money to go towards social welfare spending.
In fact, the IMF specifically intervenes to prevent spending loan money on social welfare, as
a condition of extending the loan. That might have been true since time out of mind for all I
know, but it certainly was true after the first Greek bailout, when leaders blew the whole
wad on pensions and social spending so as to ensure their re-election. They then went
sheepishly back to the IMF for a second bailout. So there are good and substantial reasons
for insisting the loan money not be wasted in this fashion, as that kind of spending
customarily does not generate any meaningful follow-on spending by the recipients, and is
usually absorbed by the cost of living.
But as we are all aware, such IMF interventions have a definite political agenda as well.
In Ukraine's case, the IMF with all its political inveigling is matched against a crafty
oligarch who will lift the whole lot if he is not watched. Alternatively, he might well blow
it all on social spending to ensure his re-election, thus presenting the IMF with a dilemma
in which it must either continue to support him, or cause him to fall.
"... The truth about this "17 intel agencies" claim matters, not so much because of what it says about the intelligence community's
conclusion on Russian meddling, but because of what it says about the establishment media's conclusion on Russian meddling. ..."
"... The fact is many of these narratives bear all the same hallmarks as the "17 intelligence agencies" mess. ..."
"... Based on the word of one anonymous source, The Washington Post reported that Russia had hacked the U.S. electrical grid. That
was quickly proven false when the electric company, which the reporter had not bothered to contact before publishing, said in a statement
the grid definitely was not hacked , and the "Russian hacker" may have been no hacker at all, but an employee who mistakenly visited
an infected site on a work computer. ..."
"... The media is bent on supporting already foregone conclusions about Trump and Russian meddling, no matter what they have to
scoop up or parrot or claim (or ignore) to do so. ..."
"... for the media, it's also just a "basic fact" that Trump likely colluded with Russia, and that he should be impeached, and that
his White House is on the verge of literally disappearing into a sinkhole. ..."
When Hillary Clinton claimed "17 intelligence agencies" agree on Russian meddling in the third presidential debate, a host of media
outlets including The New York Times rated the claim as 100 percent true. Nine months later, those same outlets say the stat is obviously
false, and there's been a "simple" explanation as to why all along.
A closer look at how the claim survived and thrived over those nine months reveals a startling lack of skepticism in the press
when it comes to the Russia narrative. The truth is the great majority of the 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community
had nothing to do with the investigation and made no judgments about the matter.
"The reason the views of only those four intelligence agencies, not all 17, were included in the assessment is simple: They were
the ones tracking and analyzing the Russian campaign," The New York Times now
reports
. "The rest were doing other work."
Strange admission for the paper, since its star political reporter recently
reiterated the false claim as she was in the middle of writing an article characterizing President Trump as stubbornly foolish.
"The latest presidential tweets were proof to dismayed members of Mr. Trump's party that he still refuses to acknowledge a basic
fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help him
get elected," Maggie Haberman wrote. Her story was later corrected to reflect the -- basic fact -- that only three agencies working
under the Director of National Intelligence contributed to the intelligence community's conclusion.
A few days later, the Associated Press
echoed that correction in a "clarification" bulletin acknowledging there's no truth to the claim the wire service had repeatedly
blasted out for publication to news outlets all over the world.
The bizarrely timed corrections put the media in a bit of a truth pickle, especially after Trump drew attention to the corrections
at a high-profile press conference in Poland. "They had to apologize, and they had to correct," he noted.
The New York Times, CNN and others quickly spun up articles and tweets aimed at steering the conversation away from this uncomfortable
truth about their proliferation of an outright false claim, and back to the more comfortable "isn't Trump an idiot?" narrative.
"17 intel agencies or four? Either way, Russia conclusion still valid," Politifact
wrote in a Thursday headline . "Trump still doesn't seem to believe his intelligence agencies,"
CNN blared .
The New York Times
took
it a step further , dismissing the truth of the claim as a "technicality" and then accusing Trump of spreading a "misleading"
narrative by correcting the record. Their headline on a story about Trump calling them out for pushing a bogus claim: "Trump Misleads
on Russian Meddling: Why 17 Intelligence Agencies Don't Need to Agree."
But that uncomfortable truth remains. The "17 intelligence agencies" embellishment is frighteningly easy to catch. A cursory glance
of the DNI website would show the truth. More importantly, the sheer length of time the falsehood stood in public record at the highest
echelons of media betrays an astounding lack of scrutiny on other points in the Russia narrative, which are often sourced to political
operatives and anonymous "officials."
Let's look at how this happened, and what it says about the media's overall credibility in the Russia collusion narrative, from
the top.
The claim can be traced straight back to candidate Clinton in the third presidential debate, remarking on Russian meddling a few
weeks after the DNI released a statement on the investigation. The press didn't demonstrate any interest in the number of agencies
that signed off on the Oct. 7 statement, until Clinton unleashed the "17" number in the debate (other than a CNN report
incorrectly claiming there are
19 intelligence agencies).
She was clearly trying to add some umpf to the DNI assessment and pour cold water on Trump's skepticism about Russia's attempt
to influence the election. She even repeated the number twice, firmly planting it in the record.
"I think that this is such an unprecedented situation," Clinton said. "We've never had a foreign government trying to interfere
in our election. We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks,
these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply
disturbing."
Trump took the bait.
"She has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else," he replied, setting off a back and forth that would be reiterated
over and over in the press as evidence
he was in denial about Russian meddling. "I am quoting 17, 17 -- do you doubt?" Clinton said, and Trump responded definitively: "Our
country has no idea. Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt it."
With that, Hillary's claim was up and off.
Journalists highlighted the talking point on Twitter as they covered the debate. And
the fact checks came rolling in.
The New York Times
,
Politico ,
ABC News ,
Politifact and PBS
all rated the claim as totally true the night of the debate. Before the night ended The New York Times was using Clinton's number
with authority in its reporting, saying
in a debate wrap up that Trump had "refused" to acknowledge "the unanimous conclusion of America's 17 intelligence agencies."
The following day the number popped up in reports from Politico and Defense One, quickly divorced from its context as a debate
talking point and transformed into an indisputable fact attached to Trump-Russia stories.
"The Office of the Director of National Intelligence collects and coordinates for the President the information and analysis from
the 17 agencies that make up U.S. national intelligence collection," a line
in the Defense One report on "Trump's Denial" stated.
Politico hadn't previously used the 17 figure in reporting on Russian meddling, but now
framed it as common
knowledge that Clinton had to "explain" to Trump: "As Clinton tried to explain that the Russian role is the finding of 17 military
and civilian intelligence agencies, Trump cut her off: 'I doubt it.'"
The fact checks continued to roll in. USA Today wrote a
particularly aggressive check on the claim headlined "Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking."
The article confidently asserted, "Clinton is correct."
All of these "fact checks" and reports were wrong, of course, as has since been made ultra clear. As The New York Times now concedes,
the truth about her claim was obviously false from the start. Any reporter capable of operating Google could have looked up a list
of the intelligence agencies in question, and ruled out almost half in just minutes.
The Department of Energy, Treasury and Drug Enforcement agencies can be dismissed out of hand. The military service intelligence
organizations can't legally operate on U.S. soil. Add the Coast Guard and we're tentatively at eight remaining intel agencies under
DNI. The Defense Intelligence Agency is also unlikely. Geospatial intelligence? Definitely not. National recon office? Not unless
a political influence campaign has something to do with a missile launch or natural disaster.
That leaves us with State Department intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA and NSA. Five tops, narrowed down
at the speed of common sense and Google.
Sure, the October DNI report was presented as the conclusion of the intelligence community, which does consist of 16 separate
agencies headed up by the DNI. At first glance, her claim might seem perfectly reasonable to someone unfamiliar with the makeup of
the intelligence community. But it's journalistic malpractice to do a fact-check level review of her claim that each agency separately
reviewed and judged the campaign, without so much as hinting at the obvious likelihood that most of them weren't involved.
Nevertheless, the claim persisted.
"All 17 U.S. Intelligence agencies believe the Russians are behind that leak," ABC host George Stephanopoulos told Trump
in
an October interview . "Why don't you believe it?"
"[Trump] has consistently denied any link between the hackers and the Kremlin, despite 17 intelligence agencies' claims to the
contrary," the Daily Beast
reported
that same day .
NBC News dropped Hillary's number nugget
in
a December report on the Obama White House asking the intelligence community for a dossier on the hacking assessment. The resulting
report would be shared with the public, White House counterterrorism advisor Lisa Monaco said at the time.
"Monaco used careful language, calling it a 'full review of what happened during the 2016 election process,'" NBC reported. "But
since the U.S. government has already said that all 17 intelligence agencies agree Russia was behind the hacks, Monaco's meaning
was clear."
Reuters, too, touted the number
in a December report that characterizes the DNI as a "17-agency strong" operation.
The declassified DNI report that followed in January
provided new details on the assessment that dumped ice-cold water on the "17 intelligence agencies agree" claim. The conclusion
was drawn only from the NSA, CIA and FBI, the report said. (The New York Times
conceded this in a break down of the report, although the claim would later make its way back into the paper's pages.)
A few months later former national intelligence director James Clapper reiterated the truth in a high-profile congressional hearing
about Russian interference, opting to correct the record without any partisan prompting.
"As you know, the I.C. was a coordinated product from three agencies; CIA, NSA, and the FBI -- not all 17 components of the intelligence
community," he said in his opening remarks. "Those three under the aegis of my former office."
And when Democrat Sen. Al Franken reiterated the false claim later in the hearing, Clapper once again made a point of correcting
the record.
"The intelligence communities have concluded -- all 17 of them -- that Russia interfered with this election," Franken said. "And
we all know how that's right."
Clapper interjected: "Senator, as I pointed out in my statement, Senator Franken, it was, there were only three agencies directly
involved in this assessment, plus my office."
"But all 17 signed on to that?" Franken pressed.
"Well, we didn't go through that, that process," Clapper replied, again shooting down the claim as utterly false. "This was a
special situation because of the time limits we decided to restrict it to those three."
So not only was the assessment only made by three of the 16 agencies working under the DNI, but also Clapper indicated here that
none of the other agencies even signed off on the report before it was released. Yes, none of them dissented. But why would they,
since they didn't have independent evidence to suggest otherwise?
At this point in the life of Hillary's debate talking point, there's just no credible way to rate the claim as true. The DNI report
made the truth explicit, and Clapper had now reiterated that truth in a very public setting.
Yet just a few weeks later Clinton unabashedly reiterated the "17 agencies agree" claim
in an interview
with the tech outlet recode, and as if on cue the media once more began spreading it around.
"Read the declassified report by the intelligence community that came out in early January," Clinton said. "17 agencies, all in
agreement – which I know from my experience as a senator and secretary of state is hard to get – they concluded with 'high confidence'
that the Russians ran an extensive information war against my campaign to influence voters in the election."
A little while later the bogus claim
showed up in an AP report , after The Daily Caller News Foundation
fact checked Clinton's claim in the interview and found it false. And then
twice
more in June before the "clarification" memo was published. Stephanopolous was back at it as well
in a June
11 interview with Republican Sen. Mike Lee. And then that Haberman report in The New York Times on the 25th echoing the claim,
which was rather strangely corrected four days later.
After all this, CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta
actually accused Trump on Thursday of pushing "fake news" by saying the conclusion only came from "three or four" agencies. "Where
does that number come from?" Acosta asked.
The timing of the AP and NYT corrections are a bit of a mystery, but for whatever reason the press is now collectively saying
Trump is correct in his push back on the "17 agencies" claim. And that's got the narrative a bit tangled. After initially
doubling down on the "true" rating of Clinton's debate claim, Politifact is now bizarrely also rating the claim
mostly false in a separate fact check.
So we're left with that uncomfortable truth. The establishment press uncritically "vetted" and embraced a Clinton campaign talking
point designed to make Trump look foolish, divorced it of its political context and reiterated it word-of-God style for more than
six months -- all the time either ignoring or missing entirely easily obtainable information proving it false -- and then suddenly
reversed course on the claim weeks after it was unambiguously and authoritatively debunked.
We live in a world where r/the_donald -- a Reddit thread teeming with Trump supporters --
proved
more shrewd than The New York Times and the Associated Press when vetting an important claim about the Russia
investigation.
The truth about this "17 intel agencies" claim matters, not so much because of what it says about the intelligence community's
conclusion on Russian meddling, but because of what it says about the establishment media's conclusion on Russian meddling.
Haberman and her ilk seem intent on casting Trump as a loner bordering on a nervous breakdown, maniacally watching the
news at all hours, hollering at staff and generally acting like a buffoon. And there's the almost daily implication that Trump personally
coordinated a hacking campaign with Russia, an implication grounded in no hard evidence despite a lengthy investigation.
The fact is many of these narratives bear all the same hallmarks as the "17 intelligence agencies" mess.
Sources often appear to be politically motivated, like Clinton. They show up in bizarre numbers, like "dozens" or "more than 30."
Anecdotes seem almost questionable at face value. An astonishing number of hastily reported or vaguely sourced "scoops" turn out
to be totally wrong when the subject of the story corrects the record.
In a report casting
the White House as fraught and bordering on collapse, Haberman wrote that Trump likes to stew over cable news in a bathrobe.
The White House refuted the anecdote
in no uncertain terms
the following day.
Based on the word of one anonymous source, The Washington Post reported that Russia had hacked the U.S. electrical grid. That
was quickly proven false when the electric company, which the reporter had not bothered to contact before publishing, said in a statement
the grid
definitely was not hacked , and the "Russian hacker" may have been no hacker at all, but an employee who mistakenly visited an
infected site on a work computer.
CNN reported that Former FBI Director James Comey
would
refute Trump's claim the director told him three separate times he was not personally under investigation. Comey did no such
thing. In fact he
corroborated Trump's account .
Just weeks after retracting a story
on a wealthy Trump associate and Russia, CNN insisted for days Trump would not ask Putin about Russian meddling during their
first meeting. Of course, the report depended on an anonymous source. Of course,
it was wrong
. One of the first things Trump did when he sat down with Putin was "press" him on the subject multiple times, according to Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson, who was in the room.
We could go on, but the point remains. The media is bent on supporting already foregone conclusions about Trump and Russian
meddling, no matter what they have to scoop up or parrot or claim (or ignore) to do so. Sure, it's a "basic fact" Russia meddled
in the election. But for the media, it's also just a "basic fact" that Trump likely colluded with Russia, and that he should
be impeached, and that his White House is on the verge of literally disappearing into a sinkhole.
The facts they use to support these conclusions might as well be irrelevant.
Trump deflated and sold all his election promises. He is essentially a neocon now. why he will be
different on immigration?
Notable quotes:
"... Trump Interrupted 6 Times in Poland With a Chant You Might Have Thought Would Only Be Heard in the USA ..."
"... Independent Journal Review, ..."
"... Critically, the president identified border security as one of the most important issues during his speech, declaring that the will to enforce immigration laws is synonymous with the will to defend Western Civilization. ..."
"... Trump's speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto ..."
"... 'Kate's Law' battle shifts to the Senate, testing Dems ..."
"... As Trump's Coach, Senator Cotton Provides Policy to Match Rhetoric ..."
"... 'These deaths were preventable': Trump urges Senate to pass 'Kate's Law,' ..."
"... Immigration bills face Senate hurdle ..."
"... San Antonio Express-News, ..."
"... Trump's 'face-lift' tweet overshadows week to push immigration, energy policies ..."
"... Washington Examiner, ..."
"... How The Democrats Lost Their Way On Immigration ..."
"... What's the point of an anti-immigrant left ..."
"... Trump is winning the immigration debate ..."
"... In my opinion, even more important than to attack the hostile, mostly liberal media is for Trump to distance himself not just form the Neocon wing of the Republican party, but also to keep a healthy distance from and even attack Ayn Rand fanboys like Paul Ryan and other lackeys of the Koch Brothers ..."
"... No, Donald Trump hasn't really read "Atlas Shrugged." Sad! But he's surrounding himself with Ayn Rand superfans ..."
"... IMO, Trump's deeds rarely match the words written for him by his speechwriter(s). There's been little progress on our Southern border wall and his administration only marginally decreased refugees to 50K for 2018. I want zero or only white refugees from S. Africa – not racial, cultural and religious aliens from the third world. ..."
"... That remains to be seen as Trump has drifted towards the center on immigration since his inauguration. He kept DACA in place and hasn't uttered one negative word on the presumption of birthright citizenship or implored Congress to pass legislation clarifying that the 14th amendment only applied to descendants of blacks slaves and not every person who sneaks across the border and drops an anchor baby or two or eight. The same applies to visa holders and "maternity tourists". ..."
"... Poland and the CIA – what memories, what a work over! Lech Walesa and Solidarność. No wonder they cheer Trump, but they might as well be cheering any US President and that's the point. ..."
"... There is no real opposition to Trump. He's a walking clown, pay attention if you must. But the mainstream media includes Kirkpatrick as much as it does The Atlantic and Vox and Fox and CNN. Super national corporations delivering control over your lives. When they tell you who, what and when you should foam at mouth you'll obey – 'those damn other guys!' ..."
Critically, the president identified border security as one of the most important issues during
his speech, declaring that the will to enforce immigration laws is synonymous with the will to defend
Western Civilization. Not surprisingly, the hysterically and openly anti-white, anti-Trump Main
Stream Media screamed that the president had delivered an "Alt Right manifesto". [
Trump's speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto, by Sarah Wildman,
Vox, July 6, 2017]
Nothing of the sort of course: Trump
merely delivered the kinds
of patriotic platitudes which every other generation in history would have taken for granted. However,
with many Western nations
under de facto occupation by a hostile elite, such common sense comments are revolutionary. More
importantly, President Trump
finally seems to be going on the attack in the last week , championing the kinds of populist
policies which put him in office.
The House Republicans finally seem to be taking some action on the immigration issue, recently
passing both
Kate's Law and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act . The former increases penalties on criminal
aliens who attempt to reenter our country and latter cuts funding to cities which refuse to imply
with federal immigration laws. Two dozen House Democrats voted for "Kate's Law" and Senate Democrats
in red states, a number of whom are facing re-election in 2018, will be under pressure to support
the legislation in the Senate. [
'Kate's Law' battle shifts to the Senate, testing Dems, by Jordain Carney
and Rafael Bernal, The Hill, July 3, 2017]
The increasing willingness of the President's team to seek the advice of Senator Tom Cotton, who
seems to have succeeded Jeff Sessions as the greatest immigration patriot in the upper chamber, is
also an encouraging sign [
As Trump's Coach, Senator Cotton Provides Policy to Match Rhetoric, by Maggie
Haberman and Matt Flegenheimer, New York Times, June 8, 2017]. Most importantly, Trump himself
is taking the strategic offensive, championing his success on these issues. [
'These deaths were preventable': Trump urges Senate to pass 'Kate's Law,'Fox Insider,
July 1, 2017]
Of course, the real question is what the Republican Senate Leadership will do. Everything depends
on whether Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is willing to put the bills up for a vote and pressure
the caucus to vote for them. [
Immigration bills face Senate hurdle, by Bill Lambrecht, San Antonio Express-News,
July 5, 2017]
And here, again, it's really not even about McConnell but about Trump's own will. While Trump's
fight with the MSM is amusing and important, ultimately, he needs to put pressure on the leaders
of his own party. The battles with CNN and Mika Brzezinski risks distracting from the real policy
accomplishments the president poised to secure in the coming weeks [
Trump's 'face-lift' tweet overshadows week to push immigration, energy policies
, by Alex Pappas, Washington Examiner, June 30, 2017]. As leader of the party, he can
set the priority and challenge McConnell to put his weight behind the immigration bills.
If Trump indeed has the "will" to go through with it, there are the faint outlines how to achieve
the political realignment necessary for the United States of America to survive in any meaningful
sense. For the first time in many years, there are real splits on the intellectual Left on immigration.
Peter Beinart recently admitted in The Atlantic, "A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned
immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today,"
citing the legacy of Barbara Jordan among others . While Beinart is far from a born-again immigration
patriot, he admitted restrictionists have valid concerns that progressives should heed:
Liberals must take seriously Americans' yearning for social cohesion. To promote both mass
immigration and greater economic redistribution, they must convince more native-born white Americans
that immigrants will not weaken the bonds of national identity. This means dusting off a concept
many on the left currently hate: assimilation.
Of course, Leftist Enforcer
Dylan Matthews , [ Email him
] whose entire oeuvre can be summarized as a
hysterical insistence on the moral necessity of
white genocide , blasted Beinart on the grounds that Open Borders is what defines the
West. "Beinart doesn't actually seem to care about promoting mass immigration," Matthews sneers.
"And that's the one answer to this dilemma that's completely unacceptable". [
What's the point of an anti-immigrant left, Vox, July 2, 2017]
To whom? Matthews decrees:
[A]ny center-left party worth its salt has to be deeply committed to egalitarianism, not just
for people born in the US but for everyone it means treating people born outside the US as equals.
But of course, this renders American
citizenship essentially pointless. Indeed being an "American" (which would simply mean owning
a certain kind of passport) would be an active disadvantage, as you would simply exist to be tax-farmed
for the benefit of
an ever growing number of hostile and hapless Third Worlders .
Few Americans would sign up for this. So, as even
Rich Lowry [
Email him
] now admits, Donald Trump is "winning" on immigration simply by mentioning the issue and breaking
apart the Democratic coalition.
Trump probably wouldn't have won without running so directly into the teeth of the elite consensus.
According to a
study published by Public Religion Research Institute and the
Atlantic of white working-class voters, it was anxiety about culture change and support for
deporting undocumented immigrants that correlated with voting for Trump, not loss of economic
or social standing. Likewise, a Democracy Fund Voter Study Group
report found Hillary Clinton cratered among populist voters who had supported Barack Obama,
with the issue of immigration looming large.[Links added by VDARE.com]
• 100 Words When Bush jr was in Vilnius he was also cheered, by 30.000 carefully selected Lithuanians.
If Warschau did the same, I do not know.
However, Poles still seem afraid of Russia, and they resist the Muslim immigration Brussels tries
to force on them.
The crash of the Polish aircraft with nearly the whole Polish establishment on board on its way
to Katyn still is blamed on Russia, while it was Polish stupidity, and too much liquor.
So maybe this was a spontaneous crowd.
This paper by Dutton and van der Linden (2014) might be interesting to you:
Who are the "Clever Sillies"? The intelligence, personality, and motives of clever
silly originators and those who follow them
[...] European Romantic nationalism could be seen as problematic from a Jewish perspective.
Both thinkers may have been motivated by the good of their group.
[...]
neo-liberal "Chicago School"-style economics, also known as "Freshwater" economics, promoted
by Milton Friedman
[...]
Western mind seducer and manipulator, "Objectivist" Ayn Rand
[...] The Refutation of Libertarianism
[...] But the competition for global domination is rarely honest. Thus when Western individualist
societies conquered and absorbed collectivist ones, it was only a matter of time before
the more intelligent tribes learned how to cheat.
In my opinion, even more important than to attack the hostile, mostly liberal media is
for Trump to distance himself not just form the Neocon wing of the Republican party, but
also to keep a healthy distance from and even attack Ayn Rand fanboys like Paul Ryan and other
lackeys of the Koch Brothers :
Fountainhead of bad ideas: Ayn Rand's fanboys take the reins of power
No, Donald Trump hasn't really read "Atlas Shrugged." Sad! But he's surrounding himself
with Ayn Rand superfans
"Libyans enjoyed the highest quality of life in all of Africa. Libyan citizens enjoyed free
universal health care from prenatal to geriatric, free education from elementary school to post-graduate
studies and free or subsidized housing. We were told that Gaddafi ripped off the nation's oil
wealth for himself when in reality Libya's oil wealth was used to improve the quality of life
for all Libyans.
We were told that Libya had to be rebuilt from scratch because Gaddafi had not
allowed the development of national institutions. If we knew that infant mortality had been seriously
reduced, life expectancy increased and health care and education made available to everyone, we
might have asked, "How could all that be accomplished without the existence of national institutions?"
Knowledge is the antidote to propaganda and brainwashing which is exactly why it is being increasingly
controlled and restricted."
Critically, the president identified border security as one of the most important issues
during his speech, declaring that the will to enforce immigration laws is synonymous with the
will to defend Western Civilization.
IMO, Trump's deeds rarely match the words written for him by his speechwriter(s). There's
been little progress on our Southern border wall and his administration only marginally decreased
refugees to 50K for 2018. I want zero or only white refugees from S. Africa – not racial, cultural
and religious aliens from the third world.
The increasing willingness of the President's team to seek the advice of Senator Tom Cotton,
who seems to have succeeded Jeff Sessions as the greatest immigration patriot in the upper
chamber,
Cotton has a proposed immigration bill that reduces legal immigration from 1.1 million to 700K.
It also takes aim at some chain migration mechanisms which is a positive step, but overall immigration
still overwhelmingly favors the third world. Some "immigration patriot".
Even if this miraculously passes this does nothing to arrest the pro-third world demographic
trends that ensures white go from majority to plurality by 2040 and America is still on a path
to become Brazil Norte.
The House Republicans have proven they will go along with a Trump immigration agenda, provided
the president leads the way.
That remains to be seen as Trump has drifted towards the center on immigration since his
inauguration. He kept DACA in place and hasn't uttered one negative word on the presumption of
birthright citizenship or implored Congress to pass legislation clarifying that the 14th amendment
only applied to descendants of blacks slaves and not every person who sneaks across the border
and drops an anchor baby or two or eight. The same applies to visa holders and "maternity tourists".
• 200 Words Poland and the CIA – what memories, what a work over! Lech Walesa and Solidarność.
No wonder they cheer Trump, but they might as well be cheering any US President and that's the
point.
Americans are long worked over – they are led to believe in some fictional mass of opposition
"that hates white people so they oppose Trump" and the standard false equivalence of a "main stream
media" that isn't themselves to begin with! The so-called left are the dancing partners who play
their part in this fraud – put up targets so the other team can shoot at them, that isn't left,
and that isn't right.
There is no real opposition to Trump. He's a walking clown, pay attention if you must.
But the mainstream media includes Kirkpatrick as much as it does The Atlantic and Vox and Fox
and CNN. Super national corporations delivering control over your lives. When they tell you who,
what and when you should foam at mouth you'll obey – 'those damn other guys!'
The unelected mob with their clowns on podiums doesn't concern themselves with borders, security
and punishment the way their controlled minions are programmed to. These are there weapons – they'll
publish every op-ed online if need be for you to cheer on the use of these weapons. Wear your
weblinks like Solidarnosc buttons. You love Lockheed and you hate the others.
Neoliberalism like Bolshevism sacrifices nations on the altar of globalism.
Notable quotes:
"... You have divided into two parts all men throughout your empire everywhere giving citizenship to all those who are more accomplished, noble, and powerful, even as they retain their native-born identities, while the rest you have made subjects and the governed. ..."
"... Ultimately, the American identity has not been lost within the past 60 years, it just has transformed, similar to when the Thirteen Colonies began as primarily British, but subsumed other European groups who were historic rivals, and eventually non-Europeans. The Welsh, the Cornish, Bavarians, the Catalans–they were distinct sub-Europeans groups, but over generations they intermingled and dispersed in our great land. Americans are a mixture of European and non-European ethnostates who, like any and all groups, self-identify. ..."
"... This identification is the direct result of indoctrination from our Founding Fathers. ..."
"... The idea that "diversity is strength", in the context of a society, is the kind of barefaced falsehood that only a man made foolish or dishonest by political dogma could believe or assert. ..."
"... Americans eat like pigs. US has become the premier imperialist power in the world, even aiding Al-Qaida in Syria and aiding neo-nazis in Ukriane. We are told we must support Israel or Sodomia because it has the biggest homo 'pride' parade. ..."
"... America is a culture in decay, it is a huge piece of land with lots of resources and ruled by outside forces from within. ..."
"... Pat seems to imply that if the original ancestry had been maintained, America would not have the problems it now faces. He singlehandedly lays out the blame for the decline of American Republic/democracy at the feet of non-white foreigners. Let us follow this line of reasoning and see where it leads us. ..."
In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks
of "one people." The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins,
"We the people "
And who were these "people"?
In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as "one united people descended from the same ancestors,
speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government,
very similar in their manners and customs "
If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of Americans as one
nation and one people?
We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country. We do not
speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago ceased to profess
the same religion. We are Evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons,
Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.
Federalist No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today's elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength.
But is this true or a tenet of trendy ideology?
After the attempted massacre of Republican Congressmen at that ball field in Alexandria, Fareed
Zakaria wrote: "The political polarization that is ripping this country apart" is about "identity
gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation (and) social class." He might have added - religion,
morality, culture and history.
Zakaria seems to be tracing the disintegration of our society to that very diversity that its
elites proclaim to be its greatest attribute: "If the core issues are about identity, culture and
religion then compromise seems immoral. American politics is becoming more like Middle Eastern
politics, where there is no middle ground between being Sunni or Shiite."
Among the issues on which we Americans are at war with one another - abortion, homosexuality,
same-sex marriage, white cops, black crime, Confederate monuments, LGBT rights, affirmative action.
Was the discovery of America and conquest of this continent from 1492 to the 20th century among
the most glorious chapters in the history of man? Or was it a half-millennium marked by mankind's
most scarlet of sins: the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the annihilation
of indigenous cultures, the spoliation of a virgin land?
Is America really "God's Country"? Or was Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, justified
when, after 9/11, he denounced calls of "God Bless America!" with the curse "God Damn America!"?
With its silence, the congregation seemed to assent.
In 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance many of us recited daily at the end of noon recess in the schoolyard
was amended to read, "one nation, under God, indivisible."
Are we still one nation under God? At the Democratic Convention in Charlotte to renominate Barack
Obama, a motion to put "God" back into the platform was hooted and booed by half the assembly.
With this July 4 long weekend, many writers have bewailed the animus Americans exhibit toward
one another and urged new efforts to reunite us. Yet, recall again those first words of Jefferson
in 1776:
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them "
Are we approaching such a point? Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted, win the approval
of two-thirds of our citizens and three-fourth of our states, if it were not already the supreme
law of the land? How would a national referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans
are already seeking a new constitutional convention?
All of which invites the question: Are we still a nation? And what is a nation? French writer
Ernest Renan gave us the answer in the 19th century:
"A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things constitute this soul, this spiritual
principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy
of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to
invest in the heritage that we have jointly received.
"Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have made us what we
are. A heroic past with great men and glory is the social capital upon which the national idea
rests. These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and
a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them
again."
"In the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson speaks
of "one people." The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789,
begins, "We the people " And who were these "people"? In Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of
them as "one united people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing
the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners
and customs " ** If such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of
Americans as one nation and one people? **
** YES
It would appear that Mr. Buchanan is making an argument our Founding Fathers established a
British enthnostate, but IF (and I say IF) he is taking this position, similar to Vox Day, then
he is totally wrong. Preserving rights "for one's posterity" was legal repudiation of feudalism,
which stated liberties were a grant from a monarch and the State, and reverted upon his/her death.
That is, fundamental freedoms were NOT passed to future generations. The Declaration and the Federalist
Papers in particular destroys that feudalist notion. More importantly, Article I, Section 8, Clause
4, as a component of our Constitution and reflects original intent, granted Congress and NOT the
States the authority to establish uniform rules of naturalization. By definition, naturalization
extends citizenship, and the liberties related to it, to an "outsider".
So, the drafters of our Constitution and the adopting state s fully comprehended the new Congress
would have to power to receive immigrants and set forth the standards under which they are naturalized.
Citizenship therefore is NOT exclusively confined to the British. This means this argument that
the franchise of citizenship is meant to be confined solely to the British children of rebel British
subjects is not reflected in the clear meaning of the document. Since immigration was allowed
to the United States, at first to Europeans but later extended to non-Europeans, the "posterity"
includes more than the actual descendants of residents of our great nation at that time.
But, but, but "[the Constitution] did allow for the possibility of change. But change, by definition,
is not the previous state. And the original purpose of the Constitution cannot change, obviously."
Well, a contract, which essentially is what is our Constitution, that has an amendment process
is NOT meant to remain constant. It has no original purpose but to establish exactly what the
Preamble states. Posterity does not refer to the progeny of the founders but of the People as
a whole. While this population was primarily of British descent, the Dutch, Germans, Irish, Scots,
French, Africans, and Native Americans ALL fought to remove the shackles of tyranny from Great
Britain.
Posterity is synonymous with "legacy"–what we leave behind. Indeed, few, if any, had imagined
when the Constitution was created that anyone BUT a white European had the intellectual capacity
to embrace Republican principles of government YET the criterion of commitment to those ideas
is NOT itself racial or ethnic specific. Of course, that does NOT mean foreigners have the right
to enter our shores, and it is legitimate, although in my opinion unreasonable, to doubt that
non-white groups are equal to the task to embrace such principles. Of course, in the past foreigners
have ben excluded on racial and religious grounds.
Interestingly enough, Vox Day makes these arguments
"As you probably know, my argument is that the Posterity for whom the Constitution is intended
to defend the Blessings of Liberty consists solely of the genetic descendants of the People of
the several and United States. Posterity does not include immigrants, descendants of immigrants,
invaders, conquerers, tourists, students, Americans born in Portugal, or anyone else who happens
to subsequently reside in the same geographic location, or share the same civic ideals, as the
original We the People.
"Many, if not most, descendants of immigrants are not the Posterity of the then-People of the
United States. Neither are people living in Mexico, Germany, Israel, or even Great Britain. The
U.S. Constitution was not written for them, nor was it ever intended to secure the Blessings of
Liberty for them. The idea that the Constitution was intended to do anything at all for immigrants,
resident aliens, or foreigners is as absurd as the idea that its emanations and penumbras provide
them with an unalienable right to an abortion. The fact that courts have declared otherwise is
totally irrelevant.
"The proposition nation is a lie. There is no such thing, there never was any such thing, and
there never will be any such thing."
So, everyone on this fine blog, if you are unable to trace directly your ancestors to British
settlers, YOU MUST GO BACK. Like, immediately.
Happy 4th Of July!
Tom Kratman, a science fiction writer, took Vox Day to task on this matter.
"All of which invites the question: Are we still a nation? And what is a nation?"
Aelius Aristides, a Greek who received Roman citizenship in 123 A.D. stated
You have divided into two parts all men throughout your empire everywhere giving citizenship
to all those who are more accomplished, noble, and powerful, even as they retain their native-born
identities, while the rest you have made subjects and the governed. Neither the sea nor the
great expanse of intervening land keeps one from being a citizen, and there is no distinction
between Europe and Asia No one is a foreigner who deserves to hold an office or is worthy of trust.
Rather, there is here a common "world democracy" under the rule of one man, the best ruler and
director You have divided humanity into Romans and non-Romans and because you have divided people
in this manner, in every city throughout the empire there are many who share citizenship with
you, no less than the share citizenship with their fellow natives. And some of these Roman citizens
have not even seen this city [Rome]! There is no need for troops to garrison the strategic high
points of these cities, because the most important and powerful people in each region guard their
native lands for you yet there is not a residue of resentment among those excluded [from Roman
citizenship and a share in the governance of the provinces]. Because your government is both universal
and like that of a single city-state, its governors rightly rule not as foreigners but, as it
were, their own people Additionally, all of the masses of subjects under this government have
protection against the more powerful of their native countrymen, by virtue of your anger and vengeance,
which would fall upon the more powerful without delay should they dare to break the law. Thus,
the present government serves rich and poor alike, and your constitution has developed a single,
harmonious, all-embracing union. What in former days seemed impossible has in your time come to
pass: You control a vast empire with a rule that is firm but not unkind "
Ultimately, the American identity has not been lost within the past 60 years, it just has
transformed, similar to when the Thirteen Colonies began as primarily British, but subsumed other
European groups who were historic rivals, and eventually non-Europeans. The Welsh, the Cornish,
Bavarians, the Catalans–they were distinct sub-Europeans groups, but over generations they intermingled
and dispersed in our great land. Americans are a mixture of European and non-European ethnostates
who, like any and all groups, self-identify. They know who they are and where they come from,
and create groups who share their self-identities. Furthermore, the default for American is American
and not a particular race, regardless of one's willingness to admit it this decided fact. When
you call yourself a black American or a Chinese American, you are still an American, as in residing
in the nation referred as the United States. And while Yankees and Southerners and Midwesterners
are clearly different, they are not separate "tribes" or "nations", just locations with groups
of people who self-identify geographically, socially, and culturally.
This identification is the direct result of indoctrination from our Founding Fathers.
Yeah, and someone named Khizr Khan, a Pakistani Islamist-supremacist who, as a lawyer, has
written articles defending Sharia law, was _invited_ by the Clinton campaign to speak at the Democratic
convention, where the Islamist proceeded to lecture Trump on the U.S. Constitution, and wagging
his finger declared .."Mr. Trump, this is not your America .." (or words that effect), to a wild
applause of brainwashed 1,000s in the audience.
@The Anti-Gnostic "Isn't the Church doubling down on modernity, social democracy, and multiculturalism?"
So are you and your family, with you being a lawyer and your wife a school teacher. Now are
you ready to get rid of all of your technological gadgets and live strictly in accord with the
beliefs AND lifestyle of Orthodoxy?
I think Pat already answered this question a few years ago when he observed that half the country
hates the other half and one half of the nation reveres our history and traditions while the other
half reviles them. Nothing has changed since then and if fact we're starting to see things slowly
escalate to threats, fisticuffs and even a few shootings.
Was the discovery of America and conquest of this continent from 1492 to the 20th century
among the most glorious chapters in the history of man? Or was it a half-millennium marked
by mankind's most scarlet of sins: the genocide of native peoples, the enslavement of Africans,
the annihilation of indigenous cultures, the spoliation of a virgin land?
Today's elites proclaim that our diversity is our strength. But is this true or a tenet
of trendy ideology?
The idea that "diversity is strength", in the context of a society, is the kind of barefaced
falsehood that only a man made foolish or dishonest by political dogma could believe or assert.
Common sense says that only societies that are at least reasonably homogeneous on most major
issues – race, culture, religion – can be held together other than by brute force, and that the
more homogeneous a society is the stronger it will be, in the sense of withstanding hard times
an external shocks. Any diversity is a fault line, along which a society can crack under pressure,
even if that pressure is merely the kind of opportunist identity lobby charlatans who have done
so much harm in modern American and European societies.
But common sense has little chance in the face of ideology.
Pat like most Amurikans in the Fourth Reich have forgotten what ideals animated the American
and French revolutions: liberty from tyrannical big guvmints, liberty to strike out on one's own
to build a business and a homestead, and a declaration of universal human rights (life liberty
pursuit of happiness privacy) all of which the current and past empires have trampled upon in
the name of greed for money and power the glue that defines America is precisely the willingness
to risk life and property for these ideals if we studied our two greatest wars 1770-87 and 1859-1965
(civil rights and states rights) we might educate ourselves to the light and dark in our culture
he(Wright) denounced calls of "God Bless America!" with the curse "God Damn America!"?
Happy Fourth. And God bless the USA.
ROTFL. Is Buchanan still in defensive mode about America?
Why would God bless the current America? Just think about it.
This is a degenerate nation whose new faith is homomania. People have tattoos and piercings
for identity. Even in elite colleges. Mainstream culture has been pornified. Just turn on the
TV. Some primetime shows are downright lurid.
We have white families falling apart too and opoid addiction going thru the roof. Gambling
is of the main industries and GOP's main sugar daddy is cretin Sheldon Adelson. Fathers raise
their boys to be pansies and their girls to be skanky sluts.
Catholic church is home of pederasty and homo agenda. Women's idea of protest is wearing 'pussy
hats' and spewing vulgar filth from their lips.
Media are 100x nuttier than Joe McCarthy in their hysteria and paranoia. These are the very
Libs who'd once made McCarthy the most sinister person in US history.
Blacks routinely beat up & wussify white boys and colonize white wombs, but white 'Muricans worship
black thugs in sports and rappers.
Blacks do most violence but we are supposed to believe BLM.
Americans eat like pigs. US has become the premier imperialist power in the world, even
aiding Al-Qaida in Syria and aiding neo-nazis in Ukriane. We are told we must support Israel or
Sodomia because it has the biggest homo 'pride' parade.
And 'pride' is now synonymous with homo fecal penetration.
Why would God bless this kind of degenerate nation?
Despite the gibberish of the lunatic left most people recognize this and quite rightly reject
the attempt to destroy their society in pursuit of a crazed political fantasy.
Not enough of them vociferously enough to make the ruling elites pay attention, clearly.
Despite this rejection the fantasy continues to be foisted upon the people.
As I noted, ideology trumps common sense, for those who make policy and for those who wish
to be seen as good guys by their supposed betters and peers.
America is a culture in decay, it is a huge piece of land with lots of resources and ruled
by outside forces from within. It is pimped to the max!!! Our cuckold "experts and politicians
" imaginations run wild whenever the pimps (from outside) and their representatives (within) give
the orders to further push this land into an increasingly decadent society .. look how happy we
are when we kill defenseless people, clearing their (pimps) garbage, work hard to collect wealth
for them, it is soooo sad just thinking about it. Carrying the pimp's flag is considered one of
the most patriotic thing to do, ask Tom Cotton, Bolton, Rumsfeld .
We no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every country.
We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host of others. We long ago
ceased to profess the same religion. We are Evangelical Christians, mainstream Protestants,
Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.
Pat seems to imply that if the original ancestry had been maintained, America would not
have the problems it now faces. He singlehandedly lays out the blame for the decline of American
Republic/democracy at the feet of non-white foreigners. Let us follow this line of reasoning and
see where it leads us.
First, unless the original white immigrants to this country had wiped out every non-white resident
(the American Indians) of this country, there would still be non-white people living in America.
However, leaving that little detail aside, let us examine who caused the decline of America.
The laws of the land are enacted by the congress of the United States. The US congress has the
sole power of imposing taxation, allowing immigration, and the conduct of wars. Up until recently
the congress of the United States consisted of mostly white citizens. Out of the 45 presidents
that the country has seen, all but one have been white Americans. The one black president was
more white than black. Just check with black citizens and they will tell you that they were better
off before him.
The British taxes, without representation, that the colonist rebelled against were much lower
than what they are now. These taxes have been imposed by the white congressmen and signed by white
presidents.
The immigration laws and quotas were passed by the white congress and signed by white presidents.
The wars, both declared and undeclared, have been waged by the white presidents.
While I sympathize with Mr Buchanan lamenting upon the good old days, no one but his own white
folks have destroyed those good old days. America took pride in been called the nation of immigrants
but only when the going was good. As long as, the immigrant scientist, engineers, and architects
made this country great they were welcome but as soon as things got rough America blamed the immigrants.
Mr. Buchanan, don't blame all immigrants. Most of them are still productive and faithful to
their adopted country. If you want to blame someone, follow the money, since money is the root
of all evil. I don't have to tell you who controls the money. You should know very well who. I
have followed your career for a long time. I even voted for you in 1992 presidential primary.
You were very outspoken then but your wings have been clipped. There is no zing left in your writing.
You have toned down criticism of the very group of people that have destroyed this country.
"Societies succeed because they've built up, usually over centuries, a widely accepted and
practiced set of behaviors; social capital built up of predictable actions and attitudes and beliefs.
The core of the culture."
Which America has. "Immigrants; who do not have that ingrained culture are likely to be destructive
of social capital and destructive to the host society." According to Vox Day, only the English
immigrants were able to understand the Rights Of Englishmen. Non-English immigrants perverted
its meaning. Are you non-English? If yes, you have to go back.
Jacques Sheete "We should be mourning our lost liberties on the Fourth, not wishing one another
happiness over the fraud."
Thank you for your virtue signaling. "Can a cesspool be a nation? If so, who would want it?"
Except America is not a cesspool, nor resembles anything like it.
The Jester
"In a historic turnabout, we have now given the feminists and sexual deviants hiding behind
Cultural Marxist ideology a legally protected status and (under the Marxist aphorism that personal
choice defines one's culture, gender, and sex) are inviting massive immigration from the hell-holes
populating the Third and Fourth Worlds."
The scope of Cultural Marxism is Fake News.
Randal
"Common sense says that only societies that are at least reasonably homogeneous on most major
issues – race, culture, religion – can be held together other than by brute force "
Except America does not fit that description.
"and that the more homogeneous a society is the stronger it will be, in the sense of withstanding
hard times an external shocks."
America's people are bound by a common set of values.
Blonde hair blue eyed Waffen SS soldiers .I assume
baptized Christian .being wasted by beautiful blonde haired Conservative Orthodox Christian Women
Russian Snipers. This is what you will always get when you fall for the lies of the worshippers
of Franco.
Hitler and Franco .enablers of the Mohammadan Gang Rape Army .Hitler's Waffen SS-Werhrmacht
gang rape Army
Short tiny Andrew Anglin doesn't realize how much he has in common with the Jewish Antifas on
a fundamental Level ..
History offers up important lessons for the Alt Right
There is a historic
precedent for the Alt Right in US History:look no further than the late
19th-early 2oth Century US Labor Movement it was racially
xenophobic .isolationist and economically progressive .The late 19th-early 2oth
century Labor Movement gave us such wonderfull things such as The Chinese Legal
Immigrant Exclusion Act and the Sihk Legal Immigrant Exclusion Act .not bad!!!
And let's honest The Alt Right kiddie brigade that worships
Hitler Franco Pinochet .also swims in the sewage of JFK and Ronnie Reagan
worship two scoundrels who unleashed race-replacement immigration policy on The
Historic Native Born White American Working Class..
"... Read Starikov... All these recent weapons deals, and many before is nothing more than what's called Reparations and Contributions. ..."
"... It's an old deal http://defense-update.com/20141222_qatari_patriots.html ..."
"... You know I am not a fan of the military industrial complex but you have to be in awe of these people. Trump sells 350 billion to SA which includes the best automatic self destruct fighter every engineered by the U.S. and then sells F15s to their obvious rivals in Quatar lol. ..."
Pentagon Agrees To Sell $12 Billion In F-15s To Qatar Tyler Durden Jun 14, 2017
4:35 PM 0 SHARES Remember when Trump called on
Qatar to stop funding terrorism, claiming credit for and endorsing the decision of Gulf nations to
isolate their small neighbor (where the most important US airbase in the middle east is located),even
as US Cabinet officials said their blockade is hurting the campaign against ISIS. You should: it
took place just 5 days ago.
"We had a decision to make," Trump said, describing conversations with Saudi Arabia and other
Gulf countries. "Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have
to stop the funding of terrorism." Also last week, Trump triumphantly announced on twitter that "during
my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology.
Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!"
Well, Qatar funding terrorism apparently is not a problem when it comes to Qatar funding the US
military industrial complex , because just two weeks after Trump signed a record, $110 billion weapons
deal with Saudi Arabia, moments ago
Bloomberg reported that Qatar will also buy up to 36 F-15 jets from the Pentagon for $12 billion
.... even as a political crisis in the Gulf leaves the Middle East nation isolated by its neighbors
and criticized by President Donald Trump for supporting terrorism, according to three people with
knowledge of the accord.
According to the Pentagon, the sale will give Qatar a "state of the art" capability, not to mention
the illusion that it can defend itself in a war with Saudi Arabia.
If nothing else, Uncle Sam sure is an equal-opportunity arms dealer, and best of all, with the
new fighter planes, Qatar will be able to at least put on a token fight when Saudi Arabia invades
in hopes of sending the price of oil surging now that every other "strategy" has failed.
To be sure, the sale comes at an opportune time: just days after Qatar put its military on the
highest state of alert,
and scrambled its tanks . All 16 of them. Maybe the world's wealthiest nation realized it's time
beef up its defensive capabilities?
Qatar's defense minister will meet with Pentagon chief Jim Mattis on Wednesday to seal the agreement,
Bloomberg reported citing people who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sale hasn't been
announced. Last year, congress approved the sale of up to 72 F-15s in an agreement valued at as much
as $21 billion but that deal took place before the recent political crisis in the region.
Oh c'mon y'all. This is nothing new. These are the same synchophants that (somehow, oops!)
created ISIS and then go in and bomb them. WTF did you expect? That they'd actually do what they
say?
A big shout out to Boeing Military. Hookers and blow tonight in the exec suite. BTW these planes
aren't sitting in inventory ready to be delivered. So any conflict in the next few years won't
have to worry about these planes.
That is unless the US or some other buyer agrees to step aside and allow Qatar to take their
place at the end of the assembly line.
That should about wrap it up on who is in charge of the Deep state. Backing both sides of a
potential conflict and making sure everyone has enough arms to blow each to smitherines. Sounds
like the old Red Shield tricks are still the best ones. Long live central bankers, after they
have been thrown into a burning pit of sulfer.
Absolutely. But, oh, these damned Iranians. They simply resisted the USA's boy Saddam and fought
back.
That failure to comply with OUR orders sealed his faith.
Weapons of mass destruction. Well, we delivered them to him. chemical weapons to kill all the
Iranians. So we KNEW they must have been there. We just didn't expect that he really used them
all up against Iran and later on (the remaining few) against the curds. What a bastard. After
all that WE did for Saddam, he didn't deliver. Fuck him.
Speaking of non-delivery, why has our newest boy, Poroshenko, not yet taken Moscow? So, fuck
him, too! And fuck the EU.
And speaking of that, where is Monica, when one needs her? And let's have some Pizza...
That could happen and did on many F-18 sales where we in the US in effect packed the parts
into glorified Heath kits and sent them to the buying countries who did their own labor. Also
sent them the testing equipment and every other thing they needed so all we got were a few spare
piece parts at a slightly lower price. The labor went to the purchasing country.
That right there is some wizard-level salesmanship. And I can assure you that these weapons
systems have "ALL" of the capabilities of the ones in our US arsenal, hahaha. And furthermore,
they cannot be messed with by remote control by the boys at the Pentagon, just in case things
get a little messy or embarassing. Nosiree. What you see is what you get. Yes, Lord.
Looks like Trump is just selling to whoever want to buy. What the hell, why not, he's shown
himself to be a sell out. Might as well be the best damn arms dealer you can buy.
You know I am not a fan of the military industrial complex but you have to be in awe of
these people. Trump sells 350 billion to SA which includes the best automatic self destruct fighter
every engineered by the U.S. and then sells F15s to their obvious rivals in Quatar lol.
I personally think the F15s will utterly destroy the f35s because all they have to do to down
an f35 is keep it flying, it will eventual blow up on its own.
Well like I said before, let the body count be super high... and let all the fucking crazy
suicide bombers head back home to kill themselves.
As Bernie, the man behind the man that shot up a bunch of congressmen said... Its going to
be HUUUUUGE... the war thats coming that is... I wonder how many oil tankers will be sunk?
Almost all the world's economic and political problems revolve around the hegemony of a global
corporate cartel, which is headquartered in the US because this is where their dominant military
force resides. The US Constitution is therefore the "kingpin" of an all-inclusive global financial
empire. These fictitious entities now own the USA and command its military infrastructure by virtue
of the Federal Reserve Corporation, regulatory capture, MSM propaganda, and congressional lobbying.
The Founders had to fight a bloody Revolutionary War to win our right to incorporate as a nation
– the USA. But then, for whatever reason, our Founders granted the greediest businessmen among
them unrestricted corporate charters with enough potential capital & power to compete with the
individual states, smaller sovereign nations, and eventually to buy out the USA itself. The only
way The People can regain our sovereignty as a constitutional republic now is to severely curtail
the privileges of any corporation doing business here. To remain sovereign we have to stop granting
corporate charters to just any "suit" that comes along without fulfilling a defined social value
in return. The "Divine Right Of Kings" should not apply to fictitious entities just because they
are "Too Big To Fail". We can't afford to privatize our Treasury to transnational banks anymore.
Government must be held responsible only to the electorate, not fictitious entities; and banks
must be held responsible to the government if we are ever to restore sanity, much less prosperity,
to the world.
It was a loophole in our Constitution that allowed corporate charters to be so easily obtained
that a swamp of corruption inevitably flooded our entire economic system. It is a swamp that can't
be drained at this point because the Constitution doesn't provide a drain. This 28 th
amendment is intended to install that drain so Congress can pull the plug ASAP. As a matter
of political practicality we must rely on the Article 5 option to do this, for which the electorate
will need overwhelming consensus beforehand. Seriously; an Article 5 Constitutional Convention
is rapidly becoming our only sensible option.
This is what I think it will take to save the world; and nobody gets hurt: 28 th
Amendment
28 th Amendment:
Corporations are not persons in any sense of the word and shall be granted only those rights
and privileges that Congress deems necessary for the well-being of the People. Congress shall
provide legislation defining the terms and conditions of corporate charters according to their
purpose; which shall include, but are not limited to:
1, prohibitions against any corporation; a, owning another corporation; b, becoming economically
indispensable or monopolistic; or c, otherwise distorting the general economy;
2, prohibitions against any form of interference in the affairs of; a, government, b, education,
c, news media; or d, healthcare, and
3, provisions for; a, the auditing of standardized, current, and transparent account books;
b, the establishment of state and municipal banking; and c, civil and criminal penalties to be
suffered by corporate executives for violation of the terms of a corporate charter.
"... Still peddling the 4GW snake oil . . . Would there even be an ISIS without the support of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Israel . . . or without the Bush administration having destroyed the Iraqi state? ..."
"... 4GW is a mantra used rather ineffectively to obscure the obvious reality of our own strategic dysfunctions . . . replacing the establishment leadership only takes care of part of the problem, and perhaps not even the worst part, which imo is conceptual . . . connected with having followed Mr. Lind and Martin van Creveld down the rabbit hole notion of the "Transformation of War" . . . ..."
"... I understand you have to generate content on a regular basis, and a conservative publication should at least try to find the silver linings in a Trump presidency, but you have provided me with very little foundation for why all of these (ostensibly good) things would come to pass because of President Donald J. Trump. ..."
"... Enjoy the dream while it lasts, Mr. Lind. But be prepared for a rude awakening. Anyone who thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance needs to have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced. ..."
"... Most Trump supporters hope for negative accomplishments, catharsis: firings and prosecutions of elite miscreants, ending immigration and deporting illegals, getting out of the Middle East, beating down the GOP establishment and, with it, great swathes of Leviathan. ..."
"... Both sides aren't seeing their candidate as being great. They just see the other side as an absolute disaster. ..."
Still peddling the 4GW snake oil . . . Would there even be an ISIS without the support of
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Turkey, Israel . . . or without the Bush administration having
destroyed the Iraqi state?
4GW is a mantra used rather ineffectively to obscure the obvious reality of our own strategic
dysfunctions . . . replacing the establishment leadership only takes care of part of the problem,
and perhaps not even the worst part, which imo is conceptual . . . connected with having followed
Mr. Lind and Martin van Creveld down the rabbit hole notion of the "Transformation of War" . .
.
It's tempting to project your preferences onto Trump because there's so much blank space there
in terms of policy, but Trump has in no way committed to firing half of our general officers,
or a "housecleaning" that takes away enough money from the Pentagon to fund a major infrastructure
program in its own right, or cancelling any weapons system currently under development.
This is all wishful thinking, even without considering what Congress would do. I understand
you have to generate content on a regular basis, and a conservative publication should at least
try to find the silver linings in a Trump presidency, but you have provided me with very little
foundation for why all of these (ostensibly good) things would come to pass because of President
Donald J. Trump.
I wish it were as simple as waltzing about the Pentagon saying "You're Fired!" There's good reasoning
in the essay with which I agree; Trump seems to have the better instincts to deal with Pentagon
Inc, particularly when Option 2 is Hillary.
But. How does one reform an inherently unreformable institution? How to overcome a system
rigged with flag officers and SES bureaucrats that were groomed for their true-belief in the military-industrial
complex? Maybe I'm just the eternal pessimist, but knowing the Pentagon culture firsthand, I see
zero chance at a "businessman-led housecleaning of the U.S. military.
"4GW does not justify big-ticket programs such as the F-35 fighter/bomber and its trillion-dollar
price tag."
I would go further and say nothing justifies the F-35. Because of its expense, it is not mass
producible, and therefore not suitable for a conventional war either. The cost/aircraft would
come down with mass production, but it would still be too expensive and slow to mass produce in
an all-out conventional war. It would be kind of like an aerial tiger tank.
Enjoy the dream while it lasts, Mr. Lind. But be prepared for a rude awakening. Anyone who
thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance needs to
have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced.
William S. Lind contrasts Trump and Clinton with respect to Pentagon reform:
Trump: "Because Trump is anti-establishment, military reform would at least be a possibility
.Trump is a businessman. Businessmen do not like wasting money. They want efficiency. They cut
bloated staffs, fire incompetent executives, and get rid of unnecessary contractors."
Clinton: On the other hand, "So long as the establishment is in power, it [reform ] is not
[possible]. In defense as in everything else, establishment leadership means more of the same.
In the case of Hillary Clinton that mean[s] more wasted money."
Lind also contrasts Trump and Clinton with respect to American interventionism:
Trump: "He has repeatedly questioned American interventionism. He roundly condemned the idiotic
and disastrous Iraq War, which suggests he would rather not repeat the experience. Of equal importance,
he has called for repairing our relationship with Russia."
Clinton: A Hillary Clinton presidency "means more wars, wars we will lose. Hillary is a wild-eyed
interventionist. She gave us the Libyan fiasco, and had Obama been fool enough to listen to her
again, we would now be at war on the ground in Syria."
However – on reading further in the Lind article – it becomes apparent that Lind's argument
is not so much with endless American military interventionism as it is with the targets of endless
American interventionism:
"The Pentagon pretends its future is war against other states The establishment refuses to
compel our military to focus on war against non-state opponents, or Fourth Generation war Might
a Trump administration see the need for an alliance of all states against non-state forces?"
In other words, Lind proposes to merely redirect the current endless American military interventions
away from existing nation states and towards non-state forces. Lind doesn't simply want to work
with other states on a case-by-case basis when it is in the US national interest to do so - rather
he wants a new "grand strategy" of an open-ended world-wide alliance with other states against
non-state forces. Lind doesn't want to put a stop to endless American military interventionism,
but instead to concentrate on a new kind of endless American interventionism.
An additional point of concern in the Lind article: In asking "Might a Trump administration
see the need for an alliance of all states against non-state forces?" Lind writes: "Here we have
a clue: Trump has chosen as a defense advisor-the rumor mill says shadow secretary of defense-retired
Army general Michael Flynn. It was an excellent choice."
Two reference articles show why Michael Flynn would not be an "excellent choice"at all: First,
in Flynn's own words on July 9th op-ed in The New York Post:
Wishful thinking, Mr. Lind even if Trump could with the election and try to make the changes you
envision. Truth be told, America is now govern by the "Deep State" of which the MIC is major part
of. Also, the MIC is not the least interested in ending any of these interventions wars as that
would negatively impact their "gravy train".
I agree that we may be projecting our wishful thinking on Trump, but what is the alternative?
Faced with a choice between a known bad apple and an apple that gives some vague hope, it is rational
to bet on the second. Especially given that it is hard to imagine an apple more rotten than HRC,
so our downside risk is limited too.
PS I was always willing to give pres. Obama a bit of a free pass because of his refusal to
implicate us any deeper in the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine. I figured the atrocity of Yemen
and blunders elsewhere (Iraq, Afghanistan, relationship with SA and Turkey, the lack of resolve
to draw an even clearer line in the sand on Syria, Libya, and Ukraine) were the norm given the
neocon-infested foreign policy apparatus, and at least he was putting up SOME resistance. Sadly,
that resounding endorsement of HRC blew it all up, he has fallen in line and we are in for some
more GW-Cheney-style insanity should she prevail. Whatever respect I had for him is now gone.
I was hoping he'd try to setup things so that the resistance to the neocon insanity and jingoism
would grow further, not fall back, as the choice of HRC clearly indicates.
"Anyone who thinks that Trump will have a positive influence on any aspect of American governance
needs to have his head examined, and probably to have it replaced."
"Positive influence" is all well and good, but we're in slow motion collapse, and it's beside
the point.
Most Trump supporters hope for negative accomplishments, catharsis: firings and prosecutions
of elite miscreants, ending immigration and deporting illegals, getting out of the Middle East,
beating down the GOP establishment and, with it, great swathes of Leviathan.
I have no idea what the Clinton supporters hope for. More abortions? More government jobs?
More immigrants? More gay weddings and transwhatever toilets? More dead Americans and Middle Easterners?
More Wall Street bailouts? More foreign dictators and more taxpayer money to put them on the US
payroll? They probably aren't thinking "more money and power for the Clintons", "more recklessness
and irresponsibility", or "more scandal and embarrassment", even though that's about all they'll
get.
While it's true this is wishful thinking, one just needs to remember the alternative. It is as
certain as anything can be in this life that with Clinton we will rush full speed ahead into more
of the same disasters. Trump is bad, but worse than the status quo? That's hard to imagine. Flynn,
though, seems to be another neocon nut, though I'm open to any contrary evidence.
I wish it were otherwise, but I don't even think that Trump is a serious candidate. He's done
nothing to encourage his supporters, taken little to no advantage of Clinton's obvious shortcomings,
and everything to provide ammunition to Clinton's legions of delusional 'liberal' fascists. This
is not a Donald who wants to win.
"Trump is a businessman. Businessmen do not like wasting money. They want efficiency. They cut
bloated staffs, fire incompetent executives, and get rid of unnecessary contractors."
Nah.
Here's how Trump runs his businesses, he incurs enormous debts by grossly overpaying for whatever
new toy he wants. Then he incurs more debt to pay himself and his family large salaries or to
pay off his personal debts. He also wastes money on the gaudy, unnecessary and tasteless "improvements"
to his purchases(small e.g., gold plated fixtures in the Trump Shuttle bathrooms). Then, he doesn't
pay contractors for the work they performed. And, when it all goes belly-up he leaves his foolish
investors or the banks holding the bag (i.e., the enormous debt).
More simply, going by his business record Trump actually loves debt, incompetence, overspending
and obscene waste.
Trump dug his grave when he delved into xenophobia and ethnic chauvinism.His ranting about Mexicans
and Muslims and now his new Nixonian slogan of being a tough law and order president has given
enough ammunition to the Democrats to trounce him coming next election.
I think Lind is proof of the triumph of hope over reality here; either that or that there is a
sucker born every minute. I think some important facts about Flynn are missed here. Here is a
statement he made to Hugh Hewitt:
"Last, I'm going to just touch on Russia and Iran briefly. Both of these countries, I deal
with in my book, because these are allies of radical Islamism, and most people don't know how
they are interacting with each other. So I just wanted to touch on that."
Today, July 12th, his book with Michael Ledeen as co-author, Field of Fight, was released.
In Flynn's own words:
"Yet, the alliance exists, and we've already dithered for many years.
The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia,
Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We are under attack, not only from nation
states, but also from al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and countless other terrorist groups. Suffice
to say, the same sort of cooperation binds together jihadis, Communists, and garden-variety
tyrants.
Flynn isn't an antidote to Hilary Clinton; they're equals in madness.
I wouldn't even now bet on Trump being the Republican nominee - the Republican establishment may
well prefer to be trounced rather than elect Trump. Look for them to give Trump the kind of "support"
a rope gives a hanged man, or to change the rules so they can select another nominee, or a combination
of both. Paul Ryan has been making noises about allowing delegates to vote their conscience on
the 1st ballot, allowing nervous Trump delegates to jump ship. All it would take is a meeting
of GOP Rules Committee, which happens just before the convention. And this is a senator who has
"endorsed" Trump, even if he has also called him a "racist."
from sglover:
"Maintaining a wobbly status quo. You'll see no grand visions of anything from HRC"
Sadly I think that IS what's expected. Similar to how Trump voters don't see him so much as
doing great things as much as "80% chance of failure is better than 100%", Hillary voters see
it as more "keeping the plane slightly tilted down being better than blowing the plane up with
dynamite."
Both sides aren't seeing their candidate as being great. They just see the other side as
an absolute disaster.
I'll be honest, given what the GOP was giving up as alternatives and assuming that Sanders
didn't have a chance in hades, Trump/Hillary was, to me, the best outcome out of the primaries.
I don't support Trump but I'd take him over Rubio or Bush.
Though note that at this point 8 years ago, I was saying "oh, Obama vs McCain. Either way,
I'm happy." Then the general election campaign kicked in and I stopped being happy over the latter
:/
Sort of worried I'll see the same here, and if the rumors about Trump's shift are true, then
I think that's exactly what I'll be seeing.
Dec 18, 2015 Donald Trump Is The Establishment Candidate
While his rise in the polls is attributed to his challenging the establishment and the political
status quo, let's look at the many ways Donald Trump, when it comes to his political positions,
represents that very same status quo. From the Fed, to war, to civil liberties, the "anti-establishment"?
Trump takes no positions not already endorsed by the establishment.
"... What is NATO? Originally, NATO was supposed to be a military alliance to oppose the Soviet armed forces and, later, the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Now that these two have disappeared, NATO has no real mission. What NATO still has is a huge bureaucracy. There is a lot of money to be made through NATO: salaries, contracts, investments, etc. Heck – these guys just built themselves gigantic and brand new headquarters , probably to "deter the Russian aggression", right? ..."
"... NATO is also a huge bureaucratic lift which can pull people up to the real centers of power, including financial power. Furthermore, NATO is also a gang of people who use NATO to advance their petty career or political agenda. ..."
"... What NATO is not is a militarily useful alliance. Oh yes, sure, the Americans can use NATO to force the Europeans to use US military hardware, that is true, but should a war break out, especially a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would push all these Eurosissies out of the way and do 90%+ of the fighting. ..."
"... And then there is the " New Europe ": the crazies in Poland or the Baltics who are making an immense effort in trying to put the Old Europeans (who made the huge mistake of accepting them into NATO) on a collision course with Russia. ..."
"... From a pragmatic point of view, NATO member states should have never EVER incorporated the "New Europeans" into their alliance. The same goes for the EU, of course. But in their illusions of grandeur and their petty revanchism they decided that *real* Europe needed to be joined at the hip with "New Europe" and now they are paying the price for this strategic mistake of colossal proportions. Of course, the Americans are bastards for encouraging the Eurodummies in their delusional dreams, but now that the deed is done, the Americans are doing the rational and pragmatic thing: they are letting the Eurodummies deal with their own mistakes. This is best shown by Trump's new policy about the Ukraine: he simply does not care. ..."
"... There used to be a time when the G7 really was huge, but now with China and India missing at the table and with Russia expelled, the G7 has become just a kaffeeklatsch for ugly rich people, an occasion to reminisce about the good old days when Europe still mattered. ..."
"... We are told that the G7 is composed of the seven major advanced economies on the planet (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), but the only real power in that list is the US. Next, it would be Germany, but Merkel's immigration policies have resulted in a EU-wide disaster and she is very much an embattled leader. She is also a prime culprit of the Ukrainian fiasco. ..."
"... in political terms the Japanese are voiceless US subcontractors ..."
"... in economic terms the G7 has pretty much been replaced by the G20 while in political terms the G7 is an empty shell. ..."
"... Trump's contempt for European leaders is definitely undiplomatic and shows a basic lack of education, but it still is a contempt the European leaders richly deserve. ..."
"... In politics, power is not absolute, but relative. Sure, the US military is basically dysfunctional and doesn't seem to be capable of frightening anybody on the US list of "enemies", but compared to Europe the US is a powerhouse. As for the Europeans, they are depending on the Americans for pretty much everything that matters. Trump understands all that and he seem to have more respect for Kim Jong-un than for Angela Merkel. I can't blame him as this is also how I feel. ..."
"... The traditional British foreign policy has always been to fosters wars in Europe to prevent any kind of continental unity. As for the US, its main objective has always been to keep "keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down". And now we see the Brits leaving the EU and the Americans pulling out well, maybe not out of Europe per se , but out of most of Europe's problems. So why are the Anglos pulling out? Is that not a clear sign that Europe is sinking? ..."
"... But for the time being, war is far less likely than it would have been the case with Hillary. What we see is Trump making "America great again" by stepping on its allies in Europe and by contemptuously disregarding the rest of humanity. That kind of arrogant megalomania is not a pretty sight for sure – but way better than WWIII. And "better than WWIII" is all we can hope for in the foreseeable future. ..."
"... The propaganda couched as the American Way of Life has become so all consuming that it took just one individual to march to center stage and reflect back our carefully hidden shortcomings and delusions for the fear and loathing to begin. We've been sleepwalking for a long time. https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/black-magic-or-jungian-shadow/ ..."
"... NATO gives the US a fig leaf by being a coalition of the willing for whatever merry ventures we choose to get into at any given time. ..."
"... I'm not so sure that the West has the will, purpose, or capacity for sacrifice to prosecute a Third World War. I think the Russians are primarily preparing to defend themselves from the disorganized, spastic lashing-out of a dying West. ..."
"... I can only hope Trump continues to treat the EU political elites as just so many gutless dogs & inept clowns: because they are ..."
"... Start with the most elementary act of common sense: stop ALL sanctions, whether economic or political against Russia. Then fully commit to Eurasian integration. Sure, the US will SPIT, but, the EU is sinking – fast. Anyway, I'll dream on .. ..."
"... You have entirely missed the point. We know good and well that the president alone does not get to make any important foreign policy decisions–or probably any decisions at all. We know just as well that he is expected to be a salesman promoting policies crafted by the banks, corporations and the deep state. We know. The point is that Trump is an incredibly bad spokesman! He is discrediting the empire by his very presence. ..."
"... American land forces never were serious contented compared to USSR and with 90′s mess reversed things are back to normal state of affairs which means Russian land forces asserting normal state of dominance along Russian borders. ..."
"... Avoiding World War III works for me. ..."
"... Yeah, I have a problem with that one too. I don't see such chivalry coming from US – assuming 90% of the fighting to save Europe. NATO was designed with one purpose only – to defend US and no one else. Anybody who believes otherwise – doesn't live in the real world. ..."
"... In the 68 years of NATO existence, the only country to ever invoke article 5 was – you guess it – US. Article 5 means asking for help from other NATO members to come to your defense when you are attacked. So US asked for help because they were "attacked" in Afghanistan. ..."
"... The money Changers's propaganda has always spread lies that have been the exact opposite of their actions. Trump probably had to buy in or he wouldn't be President and his Jewish son-in-law is there on keep an eye on him. He is changing our foreign policy to the extent that he isn't pursuing regime change in Syria even though we have boots on the ground. ..."
"... I believe that, despite the fact that we have been a fascist economic state since the Origins of the Truman Doctrine and the build up of the MIIC, Trump didn't become a billionaire because he's clueless. I'm in favor of his actions, so far. He has said screw the Globalist and screw the wasted-brains-EPA. ..."
"... Everything in the world is controlled by Money Grabbing Economy Controllers so Trump will have issues getting his MAGA agenda but his foreign policy, despite the Syria hiccup, is acceptable. After decades of our forces killing millions of civilians, if Syria lost a few at that airbase, well.. it could have been worse. ..."
"... Donald Trump: "Whenever you see the words 'sources say' in the fake news media, and they don't mention names it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!" ..."
"... Your critique of Saker's evaluation of Trump is basically grounded deeply from within the matrix, whose prisoner you seem to be. Yes, Trump is widely painted to be "a laughing stock globally, despised, cringed at, as are the people who voted for him" but no, that is the view that the mass media has been dishing out. It is not true, simply not true, even though many have swallowed it along with a whole load of marbles. ..."
"... You are basically paraphrasing Clinton when you jeer "the people who voted for him". Yes, these "despicable folk" did vote Trump into power, and yes they might well do so again. You do not seem to understand the processes at work here: part democracy, part a revolt of the people sickened by the one-sided narrative propagated in the media. ..."
First, a confession: I really don't know how the corporate media has covered the Trump trip to
NATO and the G7 summit. Frankly, I don't really care – it's been a long while since I stopped listening
to these imperial shills. There is a risk in completely ignoring them, and that risk is the risk
to say "white" when everybody else says "black". This is a small risk – and, after all, who cares?
– but today I will take it again and give you my own take on Trump's trip to Europe: I think that
it was an immense success. But not necessarily for Trump as much as it was an immense success for
the enemies of the Empire, like myself. Here is my own rendition on what I think has taken place.
First, Trump was consistently rude. I cannot judge if this lack of manners is the real Trump or
whether Trump was tying to send an unspoken message. For whatever this is worth, I know of only one
person who had personal and private dealing with the Trump family, including The Donald Himself,
and according to him, Trump is an impeccably courteous person. Whatever may be the case, whether
this was nature or no so subtle "messaging", Trump truly outdid himself. He
unceremoniously pushed aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro , who richly deserves being treated
with utter contempt. Then he blocked out Angela
Merkel during the official photo taking . He made the G7 wait for over an hour, he refused to
walk to another photo op by foot.
He didn't even bother putting on his translation headset when others
were speaking and, crime of crimes, he told the NATO members states to pay more money while
not saying a single word about Article 5 . It is hard to gauge what the rest of the assembled
politicians really thought (prostitutes are good at hiding and repressing their own feelings), but
Merkel clearly was angry and frustrated.
Apparently, everybody hated Trump, with the sole possible
exception of Marcon (but he is a high-end prostitute). As much as Obama was a charmer, Trump seems
to relish the role of ruffian. But most importantly, Trump treated the EU/NATO gang with the contempt
they deserve and that, frankly, I find most refreshing. Why?
The ugly truth about NATO: Eurosissies and Eurodummies
What is NATO? Originally, NATO was supposed to be a military alliance to oppose the Soviet armed
forces and, later, the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Now that these two have disappeared, NATO has
no real mission. What NATO still has is a huge bureaucracy. There is a lot of money to be made through
NATO: salaries, contracts, investments, etc. Heck –
these guys just built themselves gigantic and brand new headquarters , probably to "deter the
Russian aggression", right?
NATO is also a huge bureaucratic lift which can pull people up to the
real centers of power, including financial power. Furthermore, NATO is also a gang of people who
use NATO to advance their petty career or political agenda. At best, NATO is a gigantic fig leaf
covering the obscenity of western imperialism.
What NATO is not is a militarily useful alliance. Oh yes, sure, the Americans can use NATO to
force the Europeans to use US military hardware, that is true, but should a war break out, especially
a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would push all these Eurosissies out of the way and do
90%+ of the fighting. Most NATO armies are a joke anyway, but even those who are marginally better
fully depend on the US for all the force multipliers (intelligence, logistics, transportation, communications,
navigation, etc.).
And then there is the "
New
Europe ": the crazies in Poland or the Baltics who are making an immense effort in trying to
put the Old Europeans (who made the huge mistake of accepting them into NATO) on a collision course
with Russia.
From a pragmatic point of view, NATO member states should have never EVER incorporated the
"New Europeans" into their alliance. The same goes for the EU, of course. But in their illusions
of grandeur and their petty revanchism they decided that *real* Europe needed to be joined at the
hip with "New Europe" and now they are paying the price for this strategic mistake of colossal proportions.
Of course, the Americans are bastards for encouraging the Eurodummies in their delusional dreams,
but now that the deed is done, the Americans are doing the rational and pragmatic thing: they are
letting the Eurodummies deal with their own mistakes. This is best shown by Trump's new policy about
the Ukraine: he simply does not care.
Oh sure, he will say something about the Minsk Agreement, maybe mention Crimea, he might even
say something about a Russian threat. But then he turns away and walks. And the Eurodummies are now
discovering something which they should have suspected all along: the Ukraine is *their* problem
now, the Americans don't care because they have nothing to lose and nothing to win either, and so
besides empty words they will offer nothing. Much worse is the fact that it appears that it will
be the Europeans who will end up paying most of the costs of rebuilding the Ukraine when the current
Nazi regime is finally removed (but that is a topic for a future article).
There is karmic justice at work here: all the Eurodummies will now have to deal with the fallout
from the total collapse of the Ukraine, but the first ones to pay will be the Poles who tried so
hard to draw NATO and the real Europe into their revanchist agenda. Besides, is it not simply justice
for the Poles who for years have been ranting about a Russian threat and who for years have been
supporting nationalist and even neo-Nazi movements in the Ukraine to now be faced with a deluge of
problems (social, political, economic, etc.) coming from "their" Ukrainians while the Russians will
be looking at this mess from the east, protected by the two Novorussian republics and formidable
National and Border guards. As most Russians will, I wish the Europeans " bien du plaisir
" with the upcoming waves of Ukrainian refugees and the "European values" they will bring with them.
... ... ...
The sad truth is that NATO and the EU are do not deserve to be treated with any respect at all.
Trump's condescension is fully deserved. Worse, the Americans don't even have to pretend to take
the Europeans seriously because, for the past decade, the latter have sheepishly obeyed the most
ridiculous and even self-defeating orders from the Americans.
Truly, Victoria Nuland's famous words about the EU were expressing something of an American consensus
about the Old Continent.
The G7: "bubbles from a sunken world"
" Bubbles from a sunken world " is not an expression I coined. It was the Russian author
Ivan Solonevich who wrote that about the kind of exiled Russian aristocrats who still thought that
they would one day recover all their properties seized by the Soviets in Russia. Still, this expression
also applies to the G7 leaders who meet with a great deal of gravitas and pretend like they really
matter. In truth, they don't. There used to be a time when the G7 really was huge, but now with China
and India missing at the table and with Russia expelled, the G7 has become just a kaffeeklatsch for
ugly rich people, an occasion to reminisce about the good old days when Europe still mattered.
In reality, of course, and just like with the EU or NATO, the G7 is an anachronistic leftover
of a long gone past. G7 countries are simply not the place where the real action is nowadays. But
even worse than that is the fact that the leaders of the G7 suffer from the same form of senile dementia
as the EU or NATO leaders which is unsurprising since they are more or less the same people: they
have nothing original or new to say, nothing important for sure. They have no vision at all, very
little legitimacy and even less credibility.
Yes, sure, in France Macron did win, but only because
the French establishment engaged in a massive propaganda campaign aimed at beating Marine LePen.
But if you consider that only about 20% of the French voted for Macron in the first round and that
he achieved that rather pitiful score even though he had the full support of the French establishment
then you realize how unpopular that establishment really is with the French. While the Rothschild
propaganda machine tried to present Macron like some kind of de Gaulle, most French people did see
him for what he was: a hollow puppet in the hands of the transnational plutocracy. And yet, of all
the leaders of the G7, Macron is undeniably the most dynamic one, not only due to his young age,
but simply because he does not come across as some kind of fossil from a distant past.
Trump and the Eurodwarves
We are told that the G7 is composed of the seven major advanced economies on the planet (Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), but the only real power
in that list is the US. Next, it would be Germany, but Merkel's immigration policies have resulted
in a EU-wide disaster and she is very much an embattled leader. She is also a prime culprit of the
Ukrainian fiasco.Next in line would be the UK, but the UK has just left the EU and May is presiding
over a process which she herself opposes, as do the British elites. Which leaves us with Japan, Italy
and Canada. Japan's past economic power is being overshadowed by China's immense economy while in
political terms the Japanese are voiceless US subcontractors. Italy should not even be part of the
G7, at least not in political and economic terms, because Italy is much closer to her Mediterranean
neighbors such as Spain and Greece and therefore looked down with contempt by the "northerners",
especially Germany. Which leaves Canada, arguably the most irrelevant and subservient country of
them all (when is the last time Canada had anything of relevance to say about anything? Exactly).
The bottom line is this: in economic terms the G7 has pretty much been replaced by the G20 while
in political terms the G7 is an empty shell. Trump fully realizes that and that is why he does not
even try to be polite with them.
Obama was a born used car salesman: he could be charming and polite with anybody and everybody.
Trump has never had any need to act in such a way and, in the case of the Europeans, he does not
even feel like trying.
Trump's contempt for European leaders is definitely undiplomatic and shows a basic lack of education,
but it still is a contempt the European leaders richly deserve. Furthermore, while it is true that
the AngloZionist Empire is sinking, the European part is sinking much faster than the American one.
Which is unsurprising since the US is truly a very unique country.
The American Sonderfall
While I was writing this article, I have been listening to the press conference of Donald Trump
in the Rose Garden explaining to the world that the US would now withdraw from the
Paris Agreement . I don't
want to discuss the merits of this agreements or the reasons behind Trump's decision, but I will
stress that this places the US in direct opposition to 195 other countries who signed this treaty
expecting the US to abide by its terms. 195 countries really means just about the entire planet.
And yet Trump feels confident that he can afford taking a separate path and the rest of the world
will have to shut up.
Trump is right. The US is a "special case".
There is absolutely nothing the rest of the planet can do to prevent the United States from withdrawing
from this or any other agreement. The best proof of that fact can be found in the more or less official
US position that it does not need a UN Security Council to impose sanctions on another nation, threaten
it with military aggression or even go to war against it. Right now, the US have attacked Syria several
times already and there are US forces deployed inside Syria and nobody seems to care, which is kind
of ironic considering how many lawyers there are in the US and, even more so, in Congress. Yet everybody
sheepishly accepts that the US is, for some reason, above the law, that laws are for "others", not
for the "indispensable nation" with a "duty" and a "special responsibility" to "lead the world" (sorry,
I indulge, but I just love this kind of imperialistic language!).
In politics, power is not absolute, but relative. Sure, the US military is basically dysfunctional
and doesn't seem to be capable of frightening anybody on the US list of "enemies", but compared to
Europe the US is a powerhouse. As for the Europeans, they are depending on the Americans for pretty
much everything that matters. Trump understands all that and he seem to have more respect for Kim
Jong-un than for Angela Merkel. I can't blame him as this is also how I feel.
The many sweet ironies of it all
The traditional British foreign policy has always been to fosters wars in Europe to prevent
any kind of continental unity. As for the US, its main objective has always been to keep "keep the
Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down". And now we see the Brits leaving the EU and
the Americans pulling out well, maybe not out of Europe per se , but out of most of Europe's
problems. So why are the Anglos pulling out? Is that not a clear sign that Europe is sinking?
One of the favorite slogans of the Ukronazis is "Україна – це Європа" (The Ukraine is Europe).
Alas, as I wrote in a past article
, it is Europe which "became" (like) the Ukraine: poor, corrupt, lead by hypocritical ideologues
totally detached from reality and, most importantly, totally fixated on imaginary threats. The only
difference between the EU leaders and their Ukronazi counterparts is that while the latter have declared
that they are already fighting a Russian invasion, the former are only preparing to counter it. That's
it. Other than that, I see no difference, at least none that matters. Oh, I almost forgot the Americans:
they don't fight the Russians (yet?), but they are "defending" their country from the onslaught of
Russian hackers and pro-Russian moles in the entourage of Donald Trump. Brilliant.
In this world got mad, only the Russians are patiently trying to convince their western partners
to return to some semblance of sanity. But, frankly, I don't think that they are very hopeful. They
see how the so-called "West" is falling apart, how the ruling elites of the West appear to be hell-bent
on self-destruction and they wonder: why are our "western partners" so determined to bring about
their own demise and why are they blaming us for what they are doing to themselves? They also often
laugh at the quasi magic powers the paranoid crazies in the West seem to ascribe to Russia. One senior
US official, James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence,
even thinks that Russians are " almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor,
whatever, which is a typical Russian technique " to subvert democracy (I can't decide if he sounds
more like a Nazi racist or a clown probably a mix of both). As I said, the Russians are mostly laughing
at it all, but just to make darn sure things don't turn ugly, they are also
re-creating their famous "Shock Armies " (including at least one Tank Army) and
doubling the size of the Russian Airborne Forces bringing them to 72,000 soldiers and
generally
preparing for World War 3 .
But for the time being, war is far less likely than it would have been the case with Hillary.
What we see is Trump making "America great again" by stepping on its allies in Europe and by contemptuously
disregarding the rest of humanity. That kind of arrogant megalomania is not a pretty sight for sure
– but way better than WWIII. And "better than WWIII" is all we can hope for in the foreseeable future.
"Bubbles from a sunken world" is not an expression I coined.
It's a good reapplication of it, though.
The peoples of Europe no longer have the advantage they had from the industrial revolution
they created. They are resource poor, having no great areas of territory, and that depleted by
centuries of use. There is one remaining asset they could use to maintain some of their position
of punching so dramatically above their weight, which has been their status in human affairs for
the past few centuries at least, and that would be the cultural and genetic advantages they used
to create that dominance in the first place.
The ultimate dark joke is the fact that the said peoples of Europe are in the process of actively
destroying any remnants of that final asset, through cultural degradation and mass immigration.
In this light, we should consider to what degree the political and propaganda support for said
processes of cultural degradation and mass immigration emanate from the rivals and enemies of
the European peoples, with the intention of preventing forever any recovery from the disastrous,
suicidal wars of the early C20th. The most obvious source of such malign influence would be the
US, an offshoot of the European peoples which gained the most from the wars in question and has
the most to lose from any recovery of the Old World European peoples to any position of sovereignty.
(In this context, of course, any process that hastens the alienation of the European political
classes from their comfortable and profitable subordination to the US elites, such as the events
Saker describes above, can only be regarded as a useful contribution to the process of recovery
of sovereignty.)
The propaganda couched as the American Way of Life has become so all consuming that it
took just one individual to march to center stage and reflect back our carefully hidden shortcomings
and delusions for the fear and loathing to begin. We've been sleepwalking for a long time.
https://robertmagill.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/black-magic-or-jungian-shadow/
One senior US official, James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, even thinks
that Russians are "almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which
is a typical Russian technique" to subvert democracy
Sounds like a pretty good description of the Jew mafia.
"It is hard to gauge what the rest of the assembled politicians really thought (prostitutes"
Correct punctuation at that point in the sentence: ). They were thinking of their own prostitutes
and who would pay for them if the US pulls out of NATO. NATO gives the US a fig leaf by being
a coalition of the willing for whatever merry ventures we choose to get into at any given time.
Don't give Trump too much credit. After hearing his campaign rhetoric, I thought one of this
first moves would be to end the ERI, a recently created $3 billion annual American military slush
fund to add bases and equipment stores in Europe. Check out this Dept of Defense press release
this week
"The Defense Department's fiscal year 2018 budget request includes nearly $4.8 billion for
the European Reassurance Initiative to enhance deterrence and defense and improve the readiness
of forces in Europe, the U.S. European Command director of strategy, plans and policy said today.
Air Force Maj. Gen. David W. Allvin held a telephone briefing with reporters, speaking from Eucom
headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
ERI funding for next fiscal year is up $1.4 billion over fiscal 2017, he said, noting that
the funding increase will support the deterrence of future Russian aggression and malign influence
through increased joint air, sea and land force responsiveness and expanded interoperability with
combined multinational forces. 'This is one of our nation's commitments to Europe, and it demonstrates
our strong dedication to the trans-Atlantic bond and the defense of our allies,' Allvin said."
Eurosissies? Eurodummies? the 'journalism' here is becoming increasingly puerile, perhaps aiming
for a dumbed down audience as traffic has grown?
"Trump is an impeccably courteous person"?
The man has a global reputation of a human pig, a racist, a misogynist, a bigot The more I
see such outlandish and frankly bewildering statements on here, the more I begin to believe my
own value of the site has been too quickly given and now appears misguided.
I repeat, Trump has long ago persuaded the world that he is scum. Bush was bad enough, basically
a special needs coke fiend. Yet he is one reason why the rest of the world understands how a man
as sickeningly appalling as Trump could get into so called 'power'. This was not the media cleverly
depicting him in a bad light, he has always behaved in the same way, always cultivated the same
public image, many moons before running for president. It is not brainwashing or conditioning
to find a nasty moron as putrid, it is natural to be sickened by sick souls. It is possible that
the site has been co-opted, or was a tool designed to monitor and direct and feed a non mainstream
audience who revel in their own arrogant assertion of exceptionalism?
I am unsure as of yet as to why the author has gradually parted Trump and the US government
from the anglozionist machine. When clearly, by every measure, that power structure owns the US
government, decides its every major decision and as for Trump making any decisions that matter indeed,
alleged 'experts' are focusing on how he shakes hands with other 'leaders' rather focusing on
the ins and outs of what the anglozionists have organised behind the scenes of $300bn moving from
KSA to the banksters.
Trump is no leader. The more he is assumed as much the less credibility a writer enjoys. The
man is a laughing stock globally, despised, cringed at, as our the people who voted for him. Nothing
has changed with US policy, because it is not decided by the US government. Hilary, Obama, Trump,
whoever they are Punch and Judy to draw attention, to nourish the fable of democracy, to provide
a human shape to inhuman power
het vergt ook en vooral de politieke wil om een afschrikkingsmacht op te bouwen die zich kan
meten met Ruslands militaire potentieel en van Teheran tot Peking ontzag inboezemt
This is what Brill this morning writes in the more or less leading Dutch newpaper Volkskrant.
The translation: also the political will, especially, is needed to build a deterrent might
that is equal to the Russian military potential and is seen with awe from Teheran to Peking. One
wonders in what psychiatric institution Brill's treatment failed. Stalin died in 1953. Chrustsjow
removed the Russian rockets and atomic heads from Cuba. Putin sells gas.
@Carlton Meyer We, the Dutch, in a referendum rejected the EU association treaty with Ukraine.
Of course in the democratic Netherlands and the even more democratic EU it had no effect.
But it did have a curious effect. When our prime minister Rutte, nickname Pinokkio for
his lies, defended rejecting the referendum he referred to Russian vacuum bombs on Aleppo.
So he confirmed what we knew, the Ukraine association is part of the war of the west against Russia.
Rutte did not condemn the USA MOAB vacuum bomb east of Abottabad, Pakistan. NATO should
have been dissolved in 1990, perhaps already when the Cuba crisis was solved peacefully.
I'm not so sure that the West has the will, purpose, or capacity for sacrifice to
prosecute a Third World War. I think the Russians are primarily preparing to defend themselves
from the disorganized, spastic lashing-out of a dying West. They need a credible nuclear force to deter
the West from launching an end-of-life nuclear strike, and sufficient ground forces to protect
their borders from refugees and bandit military units while the West finishes its death throes
and then ( I hope) re-birth.
Great article. I can only hope Trump continues to treat the EU political elites as just so many gutless dogs
& inept clowns: because they are . Perhaps such treatment will wake the EU up (sure: LOL
!) The Saker is right about Europe's increasing insignificance but, the answers are there
.
Start with the most elementary act of common sense: stop ALL sanctions, whether economic or
political against Russia. Then fully commit to Eurasian integration.
Sure, the US will SPIT, but, the EU is sinking – fast. Anyway, I'll dream on ..
Trump is no leader. The more he is assumed as much the less credibility a writer enjoys.
The man is a laughing stock globally, despised, cringed at, as our the people who voted for
him.
You have entirely missed the point. We know good and well that the president alone does not
get to make any important foreign policy decisions–or probably any decisions at all. We know just
as well that he is expected to be a salesman promoting policies crafted by the banks, corporations
and the deep state. We know. The point is that Trump is an incredibly bad spokesman! He
is discrediting the empire by his very presence.
We don't want to be admired or respected for destroying one country after the next. We don't
want to be the leaders of the 'free' world. We don't want to be part of any entangling alliances,
or any 'new world order'. We just want our country back . And since they won't let us simply
vote to end the empire, we have no further recourse but to try and sabotage and discredit it from
within. And it's working! It's working because of Trump.
So I say: let him be as vulgar and uncouth as wants. Let him smack around the other NATO countries
until they finally wake up. Let him further erode our increasingly untenable position in the middle
east. Let him!
It's all part of God's plan for man, my friend. If we have to endure a little international
isolation in order to achieve our aims, well that's just fine with us. We are, after all, isolationists
. We don't want empire or foreign wars. We just want our country back.
We are approaching, if not already in, the interregnum between empires. Europe has never recovered
its pride since WWII the US made sure of that ..the question is whether Europe will find the
leadership during this time when the US pulls out .much like the time when Rome left Britain.
" but should a war break out, especially a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would push
all these Eurosissies out of the way and do 90%+ of the fighting."
Knowing what we know of US military it would mean mostly bleeding and running towards the Channel
losing hardware and status of so called "hyper" whatever in the process. Take away nuclear weapons
and USA is clearly not a threat to Russia.
American land forces never were serious contented compared to USSR and with 90′s mess reversed
things are back to normal state of affairs which means Russian land forces asserting normal state
of dominance along Russian borders.
EUrabia! Evolutionary process in reverse. Except for Austria and Switzerland, the rest of them
are terminally disgusting, particularly the Scandinavian harlots and the Baltic Chihuahuas. Vicky
Newland was right: F *** k the EU!
@Johan Nagel He is the President of the USA! Not of the world. So stop your ramble, and sit
down. Trump kick A*s. Who cares what the 'world' thinks, we don't care who their leaders are,
or who they voted for, we have Trump, and that is that!
Actually MOAB is just a fat airblast bomb (not thermobaric aka fuel-air, aka
"vacuum bomb", why even have a MOAB? I guess "because you can"), apparently fitted with a hard
cone so that it burrows a bit.
" but should a war break out, especially a *real* war against Russia, the Americans would
push all these Eurosissies out of the way and do 90%+ of the fighting."
Yeah, I have a problem with that one too. I don't see such chivalry coming from US – assuming
90% of the fighting to save Europe. NATO was designed with one purpose only – to defend US and
no one else. Anybody who believes otherwise – doesn't live in the real world.
In the 68 years of NATO existence, the only country to ever invoke article 5 was – you guess
it – US. Article 5 means asking for help from other NATO members to come to your defense when
you are attacked. So US asked for help because they were "attacked" in Afghanistan.
That's like me going armed into a bank and trying to rob it, and then complaining that I was
"attacked" by the security guard. NATO was simply an early version of the theorem: We fight them
over there, so we don't have to fight them here. "Them" in this case being the Russians, instead
of the terrorists. Like the Russians were ever planning to cross the Atlantic to fight the Americans
"here". Then again, when was the last time paranoia was rational anyway?
Jun 3, 2017 Putin defends Trump – 'Don't worry, be happy'
President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement caused anger and anxiety
across the world. But is there more than meet the eye? How many critics have actually read the
agreement themselves – as President Putin rightfully points out? The agreement is a framework
agreement with no particular obligations. There are no guidelines as to how resources should be
spent, and the resources which the US ratified are quite substantial.
The money Changers's propaganda has always spread lies that have been the exact opposite of
their actions. Trump probably had to buy in or he wouldn't be President and his Jewish son-in-law
is there on keep an eye on him. He is changing our foreign policy to the extent that he isn't
pursuing regime change in Syria even though we have boots on the ground.
Trump's actions are intentionally rude towards some and, contrary to belief in some circles,
he's not mad, just flabergasting.
I believe that, despite the fact that we have been a fascist economic state since the Origins
of the Truman Doctrine and the build up of the MIIC, Trump didn't become a billionaire because
he's clueless. I'm in favor of his actions, so far. He has said screw the Globalist and screw
the wasted-brains-EPA.
Everything in the world is controlled by Money Grabbing Economy Controllers so Trump will have
issues getting his MAGA agenda but his foreign policy, despite the Syria hiccup, is acceptable.
After decades of our forces killing millions of civilians, if Syria lost a few at that airbase, well.. it
could have been worse.
I don't agree with everything but the author gets a "respected" from me.
@Johan Nagel "The man has a global reputation of a human pig, a racist, a misogynist, a bigot
"
For which there is no proof, only the elitist leftist MSM's unhinged wishful thinking. Harvard
Study: Two Thirds Of Americans Believe Mainstream Media Is 'Fake News'
Donald Trump: "Whenever you see the words 'sources say' in the fake news media, and they
don't mention names it is very possible that those sources don't exist but are made up by fake
news writers. #FakeNews is the enemy!"
Your critique of Saker's evaluation of Trump is basically grounded deeply from within the matrix,
whose prisoner you seem to be. Yes, Trump is widely painted to be "a laughing stock globally,
despised, cringed at, as are the people who voted for him" but no, that is the view that the mass
media has been dishing out. It is not true, simply not true, even though many have swallowed it
along with a whole load of marbles.
You are basically paraphrasing Clinton when you jeer "the people who voted for him".
Yes, these "despicable folk" did vote Trump into power, and yes they might well do so again. You
do not seem to understand the processes at work here: part democracy, part a revolt of the people
sickened by the one-sided narrative propagated in the media.
"... No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup. ..."
"... Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, ..."
"... So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters. ..."
"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
The witches in Macbeth.
President Trump's administration is now at a high boil as he faces intense heat from all sides.
The Republican Party has backed away from their embattled president. US intelligence agencies are
baying for his blood. The US media plays the role of the witches in 'Macbeth' as it plots against
Trump.
One increasingly hears whispers about impeachment or the wonderful 1964 film about a military
coup in Washington, 'Seven Days in May.'
As in Shakespeare's King Lear, Trump stands almost alone on a blasted heath, howling that he has
been betrayed. The world watches on in dismay and shock.
One thing is clear: the US presidency has become too powerful when far-fetched talk of possibly
Russian involvement in Trump's campaign could send world financial markets into a crash dive. And
when Trump's ill informed, off the cuff remarks can endanger the fragile global balance of power.
Trump has made this huge mess and must now live with it. Yes, he is being treated unfairly by
appointment of a special prosecutor when the titanic sleaze of the Clintons was never investigated.
But that's what happens when you are widely detested. No mercy for Trump, a man without any mercy
for others.
Trump is not a Manchurian candidate put into office by Moscow though his bungling aides and iffy
financial deals often made it appear so. His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn
was an awful blunder. Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy.
Who else paid off Flynn? Disgraceful.
But what about all the politicians and officials who took and take money from the Saudis and Gulf
emirates, or Sheldon Adelson, the ardent advocate of Greater Israel? What about political payoffs
to the flat-earth Republicans who now act as Israel's amen chorus in Washington?
The growing scandals that are engulfing Trump's presidency seem likely to delay if not defeat
the president's laudatory proposals to lower taxes, prune the bureaucracy, clean up intelligence,
end America's foreign wars, and impose some sort of peace in the Mideast.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists, free-thinkers,
cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton or abuse animals
for a living.
No wonder Trump stands almost alone, like Rome's Horatio at the Bridge. One increasingly hears
in Washington 'what Trump needs is a little war.'
That would quickly wrong-foot his critics and force the neocon media – Washington Post, Wall Street
Journal, New York Times, and CNN – to back him. We already saw this happen when Trump fired salvos
of cruise missiles at Syria. It would also provide welcome distraction from the investigations of
Trump that are beginning.
Trump has appeared to be pawing the ground in a desire to attack naughty North Korea or Syria,
and maybe even Yemen, Somalia or Sudan. A war against any of these small nations would allow the
president to don military gear and beat his chest – as did the dunce George W. Bush. Bomb the usual
Arabs!
' As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents. more and more closely, the
inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach
their hart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Shee-it! I thought Dubya accomplished this . Apparently the M'urkan public is being defiant
and really wants to flaunt it's ignorance. Well, howdee! we got us a real contest goin' on now.
Trump is obviously the proverbial monkey with a machine-gun. My inner survival instincts are starting
to kick in. Does anyone see this this presidency as leveling out and trying to conduct business
like you know as it has been in the last 200 years?
This is too insane. I honestly think that some kind of the fix is in. How? Don't know.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists,
free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton
or abuse animals for a living.
No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is
no peace until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.
Eric wrote: His choice of the fanatical Islamophobe Gen. Michael Flynn was an awful blunder.
Flynn was revealed to have taken money from Turkey to alter US Mideast policy.
Hunsdon said: The notorious Islamophobe, in pay of the Next Sultan? Too delicious.
Hilllary is of course also widely detested. In many ways, the last election was a contest
about who the American people hate more, and Hillary got the award for Most Hated. Both candidates
got a large percent of their votes from people who were voting against their opponent. Outside
of CA, NY, and MA, more people hated Hillary, and the Electoral College was put into place
precisely to keep a big state or a couple of big states from dominating the election of a President.
Even in the 1780′s, many Americans didn't want NY to have the power to pick a President on their
own.
So, it turns out that Hillary is detested by the 'wrong' people. Hillary won the vote for
most hated. But she's never investigated, the Clinton's are never charged. Bill openly violated
election campaigning laws in MA, but no investigation, no charges. The Clintons have become filthy
rich during a life of public service, but no investigations, no charges. And if you even want
to hear about it, you have to turn off the corporate press and find independent reporters.
Thus, its not that Trust is simply the most detested. He's not. At worst, the last election
said he's the second most detested person in the country. But, the "right" people all detest him.
So, a small minority of government insiders and the members of the media want to run him out of
town.
There's things he's done since he's been elected that I don't like. I don't like the way that
saying he was against regime change and more wars in the middle east has turned out to be a massive
lie. But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
If not, then CA and NY and the Deep State and the Media millionaires will run this country
and everyone will know that elections don't matter.
But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing
a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue
by issue basis.
If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation,
or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political
trouble.
"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on
their electability.
If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.
By recklessly proposing these reforms at the same time, Trump earned the hatred of the media,
federal government, all intelligence agencies, and the Israel lobby, not to mention ecologists,
free-thinkers, cultured people, academia and just about everyone else who does not raise cotton
or abuse animals for a living.
No mention of the 63 millions who voted for him. Trumps enemies will make sure there is no peace
until Trump is driven from office. Blowback will insure there is no peace after the coup.
Few ruling classes had an opportunity to build an idyllical structure of society and governance
over the last four centuries as the two ruling US classes had.
Instead, they created numerous cliquish cliques and with political powers of each clique diminishing
from the two top classes down to the last class: prisoners, indigenes, white and black trash.
But still, this is rapidly getting to the point where the American people are going to need
to speak up and tell their representatives and senators, especially the Republicans, that Trump
was elected President and they don't want to see a coup remove him.
This is exactly right, and as others have said, the place to do this is a state level by reestablishing
a close contact between the public and their representatives and senators on a detailed issue
by issue basis.
If their representative is part of the chorus supporting a "Russian Hacking " investigation,
or is an advocate of further wars then they have to understand that they are in real political
trouble.
"Political Trouble" is a large scale, local, well organized and continuous public attack on
their electability.
If the public are to lazy to do this then they'll deserve what they get.
"... It began when big money was employed by political operatives such as Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, to create negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive the public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we have lost. We are trapped like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be turning the electric shocks on and off, but the problem is the corporate state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed. ..."
"... "What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity," America's best-known political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, told me last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in Frackville, Pa. " In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is 'Housewives of Atlanta.' We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that . there is no critical thinking in America during this period... ..."
"... Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of internal security, may be removed from the presidency, but such a palace coup would only further consolidate the power of the deep state and intensify internal measures of repression. ..."
Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget
the idiocy of a press that covers our descent into tyranny as if it were a sports contest between
corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a reality show starring our maniacal president and
the idiots that surround him. Forget the noise.
The crisis we face is not embodied in the public
images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional government. The crisis we face is the result
of a four-decade-long, slow-motion corporate coup that has rendered the citizen impotent, left us
without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become
omnipotent. This crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalized bribery and empowered
those public figures that master the arts of entertainment and artifice. And if we do not overthrow
the neoliberal ,
corporate forces that have destroyed our democracy we will continue to vomit up more monstrosities
as dangerous as Donald Trump.
Trump is the symptom, not the disease.
Our descent into despotism began with the
pardoning of Richard Nixon , all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the extrajudicial
assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment, carried out on dissidents and radicals,
especially black radicals.
It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organizations
that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research and the two major
political parties. It began with empowering militarized police to kill unarmed citizens and the spread
of our horrendous system of mass incarceration and the death penalty. It began with the stripping
away of our most basic constitutional rights-privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections
and dissent.
It began when big money was employed by political operatives such as Roger Stone, a
close Trump adviser, to create negative political advertisements and false narratives to deceive
the public, turning political debate into burlesque. On all these fronts we have lost. We are trapped
like rats in a cage. A narcissist and imbecile may be turning the electric shocks on and off, but
the problem is the corporate state, and unless we dismantle that, we are doomed.
"What's necessary for the state is the illusion of normality, of regularity," America's best-known
political prisoner,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, told me last week by phone from the prison where he is incarcerated in Frackville,
Pa. " In Rome, what the emperors needed was bread and circuses. In America, what we need is 'Housewives
of Atlanta.' We need sports. The moral stories of good cops and evil people. Because you have that
. there is no critical thinking in America during this period...
... ... ...
Trump, an acute embarrassment to the corporate state and the organs of internal security, may
be removed from the presidency, but such a palace coup would only further consolidate the power of
the deep state and intensify
internal measures of repression.
"... the recent news as for Rich Seth murder might take Trump probe in a somewhat different direction and put additional pressure of neoliberal, Pelosi-Clinton part of the party leadership. If half of what was recently reported is true, Clapper-Brennan "Intelligence assessment" looks more and more like Warren Commission report. ..."
"... ... Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?" ..."
Pence is worse than Trump. And he is more likely to get two terms.
In the meantime, nothing gets fixed.
Anyone who wants single-payer, better jobs, etc. should focus on the 2018 elections and work for
people who can oust people like Nancy Pelosi in the primaries and Republicans in the general.
"Pence is worse than Trump. And he is more likely to get two terms.In the meantime, nothing gets
fixed."
True. Also the recent news as for Rich Seth murder might take Trump probe in a somewhat different
direction and put additional pressure of neoliberal, Pelosi-Clinton part of the party leadership. If half of what was recently reported is true, Clapper-Brennan "Intelligence assessment" looks
more and more like Warren Commission report.
... Then, Newt Gingrich, on Fox News, says: " (Rich) was assassinated at 4 in the morning after
having giving Wikileaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody's investigating
that. And what does that tell you about what is going on?"
Well, we know that Kim's chances of attracting Congressional interest was just about nil, but
then Sean Hannity invited Dotcom to discuss his evidence in the Seth Rich case on his shows.
Stay tuned. Public invitation Kim Dotcom to be a guest on radio and TV. #GameChanger Buckle up
destroy Trump media. Sheep that u all are!!! https://t.co/3qLwXCGl6z
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 20, 2017
Most recently, he tweeted:
Complete panic has set in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Any bets when the
kitchen sink is dumped on my head?? https://t.co/Zt2gIX4zyq
- Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 22, 2017
They can dig this dirt to years. Trump is now a hostage.
Notable quotes:
"... A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, confirmed that Manafort turned over documents, adding that Manafort remains interested in cooperating with the Senate investigation. ..."
"... NBC adds that it was too early to tell whether the documents from Manafort and Stone "suggested they had fully complied with the request." In a parallel process, as part of the FBI's Russia collusion investigation, federal grand juries have issued subpoenas for records relating to both Flynn and Manafort. ..."
While Michael Flynn may refusing to comply with the Senate Intel Committee's probe of Russian interference, two other former associates
of Donald Trump complied on Monday afternoon, and
according to NBC , Paul Manafort and Roger Stone have turned over documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee in its Russia
investigation, providing "all documents consistent with their specific request." As reported previously, the committee sent document
requests to Manafort and Stone, as well as Carter Page and Mike Flynn, seeking information related to dealings with Russia. So far
Page has not yet complied, while Flynn it was confirmed today, planned to plead the Fifth as a reason not to comply with a committee
subpoena, citing "escalating public frenzy" as part of the ongoing probe.
According to NBC, the committee's letter to Page asked him "to list any Russian official or business executive he met with between
June 16, 2015 and Jan. 20, 2017. It also asked him to provide information about Russia-related real estate transactions during that
period. And it seeks all his email or other communications during that period with Russians, or with the Trump campaign about Russia
or Russians."
While the precise contents is unknown, similar letters were sent to Manafort and Stone, who then sent the requested information
to investigators by last Friday's deadline.
"I gave them all documents that were consistent with their specific request," Stone said in an email to NBC News.
A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, confirmed that Manafort turned over documents, adding that Manafort remains interested
in cooperating with the Senate investigation.
NBC adds that it was too early to tell whether the documents from Manafort and Stone "suggested they had fully complied with
the request." In a parallel process, as part of the FBI's Russia collusion investigation, federal grand juries have issued subpoenas
for records relating to both Flynn and Manafort.
Meanwhile, Flynn's assertion of the Fifth Amendment would make it difficult for the Senate to enforce its subpoena, NBC News reported
citing Senate sources: "The Senate could go to court, or go ask the Justice Department to go to court to enforce it, but either actin
would require the Republicans who control the chamber to agree." Trump fired Flynn as his national security advisor in February after
misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey
Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on Russia.
This is hilarious. Is there supposed to be some connection between meeting with Russians and rigging an election?
I am thinking that if there is to be an investigation then Congress needs to cast a wider net to include all of the past three
administrations, All international banks and their legal representatives, all of Congress and everyone who has ever contributed
to the DNC or RNC.
If they are going to hunt for witches, why not make it open season on ALL witches.
My personal preference is to be on friendly terms with both Russia and China ... not to mentioned Iran, people of all religions
and the other countries that do not have BIS tied central banks. Why do we tolerate people telling us that we have to hate someone?
Guardian defends Hillary. Again. They also are afraid to open the comment section on this article.
Notable quotes:
"... A prominent ally of Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that the - - special counsel appointed to investigate alleged links between
the president's aides and - - Russia should instead focus on the murder last year of a young Democratic staffer, Seth Rich, which has
become the focus of conspiracy theorists . ..."
"... This week, the Russian embassy in the UK shared the conspiracy on Twitter, CNN reported , calling Rich a murdered "WikiLeaks
informer" and claiming that the British mainstream media was "so busy accusing Russian hackers to take notice". ..."
"... "He's been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigate his murder. So, I'd like to see how [former
FBI director Robert] Mueller is going to define what his assignment is, and if it's only narrowly Trump, the country will not learn
what it needs to learn about foreign involvement in American politics." ..."
"... The Rich family has sent Wheeler a cease-and-desist letter, threatening legal action if he continues to discuss the case, the
Washington Post reported . ..."
Trump confidante and husband of ambassadorial nominee repeats WikiLeaks theory denounced as 'fake news' by family of murdered DNC
staffer Sunday 21 May 2017, 16.48 EDT Last modified on Monday 22 May 2017
A prominent ally of Donald Trump suggested on Sunday that the - -
special counsel appointed to investigate alleged links between the president's aides and - -
Russia
should instead focus on the murder last year of a young Democratic staffer, Seth Rich, which has become
the focus of
conspiracy theorists .
In an appearance on Fox and Friends less than two days after his wife was - -
proposed as ambassador to the Holy See , Newt Gingrich – former speaker of the House, 2012 presidential candidate and a Trump
confidante – publicly endorsed the conspiracy theory that Rich was "assassinated" after giving Democratic National Committee emails
to WikiLeaks.
Rich, 27, was shot dead in the early hours of 10 July 2016, as he walked home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington.
In August, the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, - -
insinuated that Rich had been a source. Police initially explored whether Rich's murder might be connected to robberies in the
area, according
to a local news report , and officials in the capital have publicly debunked other claims.
"This is a robbery that ended tragically," Kevin Donahue, Washington's deputy mayor for public safety,
told NBC News this week. "That's bad enough for our city, and I think it is irresponsible to conflate this into something that
doesn't connect to anything that the detectives have found. No WikiLeaks connection."
On Sunday, the Washington DC police public affairs office did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.
In January, American intelligence agencies concluded with "
high confidence " in a public
report that Russian military intelligence was responsible for hacking the DNC and obtaining and relaying private messages to WikiLeaks,
which made a series of embarrassing public disclosures. The goal, the agencies concluded, was to undermine the candidacy of Hillary
Clinton and boost Trump, as well as hurt Americans' trust in their own democracy.
This week, the Russian embassy in the UK
shared the conspiracy on Twitter,
CNN reported
, calling Rich a murdered "WikiLeaks informer" and claiming that the British mainstream media was "so busy accusing Russian hackers
to take notice".
The Rich family has repeatedly denied that there is any evidence behind the conspiracy theories and called on Fox News to retract
its coverage of their son's murder. Earlier this week, a spokesman for the family
said
in a statement that "anyone who continues to push this fake news story after it was so thoroughly debunked is proving to the
world they have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath".
On Fox and Friends, Gingrich said: "We have this very strange story here of this young man who worked for the DNC who was apparently
assassinated at four in the morning having given WikiLeaks
something like 23,000 – I'm sorry, 53,000 – emails and 17,000 attachments.
"Nobody's investigating that, and what does that tell you about what was going on? Because it turns out it wasn't the Russians,
it was this young guy who, I suspect, who was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee.
"He's been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigate his murder. So, I'd like to see how [former
FBI director Robert] Mueller is going to define what his assignment is, and if it's only narrowly Trump, the country will not learn
what it needs to learn about foreign involvement in American politics."
Last week, the private investigator and Fox News commentator Rod Wheeler claimed that evidence existed that Rich had been in contact
with WikiLeaks. Questioned by CNN, however, he said: "I only got that [information] from the reporter at Fox News" and added that
he did not have any evidence himself.
"Using the legacy of a murder victim in such an overtly political way is morally reprehensible," a Rich family spokesman told
CNN.
The Rich family has sent Wheeler a cease-and-desist letter, threatening legal action if he continues to discuss the case,
the
Washington Post reported .
After just 100 days in the office Trump already has a special prosecutor.
Notable quotes:
"... Without consulting the White House, he sandbagged President Trump, naming a special counsel to take over the investigation of the Russia connection that could prove ruinous to this presidency. ..."
"... Rod has reinvigorated a tired 10-month investigation that failed to find any collusion between Trump and Russian hacking of the DNC. Not a single indictment had come out of the FBI investigation. ..."
"... Yet, now a new special counsel, Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI, will slow-walk his way through this same terrain again, searching for clues leading to potentially impeachable offenses. What seemed to be winding down for Trump is now only just beginning to gear up. ..."
"... Why did Rosenstein capitulate to a Democrat-media clamor for a special counsel that could prove disastrous for the president who elevated and honored him? Surely in part, as Milbank writes, to salvage his damaged reputation. ..."
"... Rosenstein had gone over to the dark side. He had, it was said, on Trump's orders, put the hit on Comey. Now, by siccing a special counsel on the president himself, Rosenstein is restored to the good graces of this city. Rosenstein just turned in his black hat for a white hat. ..."
"... Democrats are hailing both his decision to name a special counsel and the man he chose. Yet it is difficult to exaggerate the damage he has done. As did almost all of its predecessors, including those which led to the resignation of President Nixon and impeachment of Bill Clinton, Mueller's investigation seems certain to drag on for years. ..."
"... Recall the famous adage that a competent district attorney could successfully indict a ham sandwich. ..."
"... Political trials are infamously witch hunts, and there isn't a witch hunt that couldn't miraculously find any number of witches to burn. ..."
"... One has to hand it to the Democrats. This strategy to get the ruling elite class back in both houses of congress and bring forth a shining night in armour for their next candidate is well crafted. The Clintons messed up the Obama Hope and Change Rhetoric. ..."
"... From the very outset of his presidency, U.S. President D.J. Trump either hired people who were against his presidential campaign all the time of last year or cozied up to perpetual political opponents while distancing himself from the very patriotic people who gave him the electoral college victory last November. ..."
"... Like Pres. Dick Nixon did, U.S. President D.J. Trump will also politically kill himself with one political misstep after another by giving his political opponents whatever they demand until it will be too late to reverse the course. ..."
"... "The real power in this country doesn't reside within the ballot box After months of leaks coming from the intelligence agencies, who bitterly oppose the new policy, and a barrage of innuendo, smears, and character assassination in the media, the will of the people has been abrogated: the Deep State has the last word. The denizens of Langley, and the career spooks within our seventeen intelligence agencies, have exercised their veto power – a power that is not written into the Constitution, but is nevertheless very real. Their goal is to not only make détente with Russia impossible but also to overthrow a democratically elected chief executive No matter what you think of Trump, this is an ominous development for all those who care about the future of our republic What we are witnessing is a "regime-change" operation, such as our intelligence agencies have routinely carried out abroad, right here in the United States This pernicious campaign is an attempt to criminalize dissent from the foreign policy "consensus." It is an effort by powerful groups within the national security bureaucracy, the media, and the military-industrial complex to stamp out any opposition to their program of perpetual war The reign of terror is about to begin: anyone who opposes our interventionist foreign policy is liable to be labeled a "Kremlin tool" – and could face legal sanctions. ..."
"... If Trump wasn't a narcissistic idiot, he could be well on the way to leading a takedown of establishment politics. Should have left Comey in to go nowhere, but Trump is a narcissistic idiot who does not read and his presidency is and will continue to be a miserable failure. Donald J. Trump is a Loser and a Laughingstock, plain and simple. There's nothing to see here. Does he have the ability to do better? Yes. Will he? Doubtful. Firing Comey is not impeachable or even wrong, it's just a blunder of monumental proportions. Trump's continued incompetent "explanations" of the decision raised red flags. This is not Trump Steaks Inc. This is the Presidency of the United States of America. ..."
"With the stroke of a pen, Rod Rosenstein redeemed his reputation," writes Dana Milbank of
The Washington Post .
What had Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein done to be welcomed home by the Post like the
prodigal son?
Without consulting the White House, he sandbagged President Trump, naming a special counsel to
take over the investigation of the Russia connection that could prove ruinous to this presidency.
Rod has reinvigorated a tired 10-month investigation that failed to find any collusion between
Trump and Russian hacking of the DNC. Not a single indictment had come out of the FBI investigation.
Yet, now a new special counsel, Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI, will slow-walk his
way through this same terrain again, searching for clues leading to potentially impeachable offenses.
What seemed to be winding down for Trump is now only just beginning to gear up.
Also to be investigated is whether the president tried to curtail the FBI investigation with his
phone calls and Oval Office meetings with FBI Director James Comey, before abruptly firing Comey
last week.
Regarded as able and honest, Mueller will be under media pressure to come up with charges. Great
and famous prosecutors are measured by whom they convict and how many scalps they take. Moreover, a burgeoning special counsel's office dredging up dirt on Trump and associates will
find itself the beneficiary of an indulgent press.
Why did Rosenstein capitulate to a Democrat-media clamor for a special counsel that could prove
disastrous for the president who elevated and honored him? Surely in part, as Milbank writes, to salvage his damaged reputation.
After being approved 94-6 by a Senate that hailed him as a principled and independent U.S. attorney
for both George Bush and Barack Obama, Rosenstein found himself being pilloried for preparing the
document White House aides called crucial to Trump's decision to fire Comey.
Rosenstein had gone over to the dark side. He had, it was said, on Trump's orders, put the hit
on Comey. Now, by siccing a special counsel on the president himself, Rosenstein is restored to the
good graces of this city. Rosenstein just turned in his black hat for a white hat.
Democrats are hailing both his decision to name a special counsel and the man he chose. Yet it
is difficult to exaggerate the damage he has done. As did almost all of its predecessors, including those which led to the resignation of President
Nixon and impeachment of Bill Clinton, Mueller's investigation seems certain to drag on for years.
Trump set up his own demise -- all the Jews like Rosenstein that he has appointed would really rather
have the rabid evangelical Israel supporter Pence as president.
The appointment of former director Mueller to take charge of an investigation too hot for Rosenstein
or anyone in his department to file a report on, particularly if no prosecution will be recommended,
does not presage this affair will continue interminably. Months of work have already been put
into the matter by the FBI. Mueller may arrive, ask those agents for a summary of what they have
unearthed, say, "I don't see anything here. Do you think further work by you will uncover more?",
and if they respond, "No", Mueller might very well take what he is given, file a report saying
no prosecution is warranted, just as Jim Comey did in the Clinton matter, and go home.
The man is retired with honor. He doesn't need to make a name for himself with this or any
other case. The last thing he wants to find out is that there is evidence that might result in
the impeachment and criminal prosecution of the President of the United States.
Wasnt pat a happy supporter of the special counsel investigating Clinton? Now suddenly he is against
such counsels? How about some priciples Mr buchanan?
And here is a hat tip for you aggrieved folks here. Trump brought this on himself. He could have
avoided it all by simply letting Comey do his job. If there really is nothing in the Russia story,
then Comey would have come up with nothing.
Trump has been used to running a family business all his life and a fake TV show as well where
his and only his word runs. That is not how the government functions and nor should it be. What
happened to the famous negotiator? The one who could make great deals? Who would learn quickly
how to navigate the waters and make things happen. This person seems non existent. Lets see some
of that please.
Wall Street swooned *not* because Trump's "populist" agenda is endangered but rather because Alt-Trump's
bait-and-switch pro-Wall Street agenda is endangered. That Pat Buchanan cannot distinguish these
is stunning to behold.
And if Hillary Clinton had been inaugurated in January, there wouldn't be a dozen Congressional
committees pursuing specious investigations, egged on by right wing media? (Even this comment
thread carries one such demand, and she is not in office.)
This is one outcome of a poisoned body politic. Roger Ailes was there at the beginning, and
we are all sickened by his legacy.
Unfortunately, Buchanan seems to have ignored the fact that Rosenstein's decision to appoint a
special prosecutor was sparked by Trump's precipitous and unnecessary decision to dismiss Comey.
It was a foolish decision and now he's paying a price for it.
One has to hand it to the Democrats. This strategy to get the ruling elite class back in both
houses of congress and bring forth a shining night in armour for their next candidate is well
crafted. The Clintons messed up the Obama Hope and Change Rhetoric.
U.S. President D.J. Trump is himself 100% responsible for the political and legal debacles where
he is in now and will be in for any foreseeable future!
From the very outset of his presidency, U.S. President D.J. Trump either hired people who were
against his presidential campaign all the time of last year or cozied up to perpetual political
opponents while distancing himself from the very patriotic people who gave him the electoral college
victory last November.
Like Pres. Dick Nixon did, U.S. President D.J. Trump will also politically kill himself with
one political misstep after another by giving his political opponents whatever they demand until
it will be too late to reverse the course.
John Gruskos (8:57 a.m.) is right. Justin Raimondo's column today is a "must read":
"The real power in this country doesn't reside within the ballot box After months of leaks
coming from the intelligence agencies, who bitterly oppose the new policy, and a barrage of innuendo,
smears, and character assassination in the media, the will of the people has been abrogated: the
Deep State has the last word. The denizens of Langley, and the career spooks within our seventeen
intelligence agencies, have exercised their veto power – a power that is not written into the
Constitution, but is nevertheless very real. Their goal is to not only make détente with Russia
impossible but also to overthrow a democratically elected chief executive No matter what you think
of Trump, this is an ominous development for all those who care about the future of our republic What
we are witnessing is a "regime-change" operation, such as our intelligence agencies have routinely
carried out abroad, right here in the United States This pernicious campaign is an attempt to
criminalize dissent from the foreign policy "consensus." It is an effort by powerful groups within
the national security bureaucracy, the media, and the military-industrial complex to stamp out
any opposition to their program of perpetual war The reign of terror is about to begin: anyone
who opposes our interventionist foreign policy is liable to be labeled a "Kremlin tool" – and
could face legal sanctions.
What goes around, comes around. The Republicans did the same thing to Bill Clinton. Remember,
if you can do it to them, they can do it to you. Be careful about the precedents you set.
Has anyone considered that the opposition from career bureaucrats is due to their past experience
as to what works and what doesn't? They can recognize a half-baked plan, concocted by someone
who has only a hazy idea of what goes on (the guy who managed to admit that health care was "complicated"
after touting on the campaign trail that it was easy). Add to it stubborness and unwillingness
to learn, and those bureaucrats may think that they are staring at an accident waiting to happen.
If Trump wasn't a narcissistic idiot, he could be well on the way to leading a takedown of establishment
politics. Should have left Comey in to go nowhere, but Trump is a narcissistic idiot who does
not read and his presidency is and will continue to be a miserable failure. Donald J. Trump is
a Loser and a Laughingstock, plain and simple. There's nothing to see here.
Does he have the ability to do better? Yes. Will he? Doubtful. Firing Comey is not impeachable
or even wrong, it's just a blunder of monumental proportions. Trump's continued incompetent "explanations"
of the decision raised red flags.
This is not Trump Steaks Inc. This is the Presidency of the United States of America.
He will
be held to a higher standard until such time as he realizes he cannot run this world's most powerful
country like some sham casino operation he let fall into bankruptcy. And @Cal, this is not a Jewish
conspiracy. If you can't see that Trump is an incompetent idiot narcissist, you can't see anything.
"... When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties, it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as an "occupying force". ..."
"... That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual". Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections. ..."
"... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
"... Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs. ..."
"... ...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." ..."
"... That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat. ..."
"... There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous. ..."
Trump is just a one acute symptom of the underling crisis of the neoliberal social system, that
we experience. So his removal will not solve the crisis.
And unless some kind of New Deal Capitalism is restored there is no alternative to the neoliberalism
on the horizon.
But the question is: Can the New Deal Capitalism with its "worker aristocracy" strata and the
role of organized labor as a weak but still countervailing force to corporate power be restored
? I think not.
With the level of financialization achieved, the water is under the bridge. The financial toothpaste
can't be squeezed back into the tube. That's what makes the current crisis more acute: none of
the parties has any viable solution to the crisis, not the will to attempt to implement some radical
changes.
When Trump becomes president by running against the nation's neoliberal elite of both parties,
it was a strong, undeniable signal that the neoliberal elite has a problem -- it lost the trust
of the majority American people and is viewed now, especially Wall Street financial sharks, as
an "occupying force".
That means that we have the crisis of the elite governance or, as Marxists used to call
it "a revolutionary situation" -- the situation in which the elite can't govern "as usual" and
common people (let's say the bottom 80% of the USA population) do not want to live "as usual".
Political Zugzwang. The anger is boiling and has became a material force in the most recent elections.
At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some
even attacked him vociferously. But, unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate
who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended up with the nomination.
The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar,
ill-mannered, tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become
so bad in their view that they turned to the man who most clamorously rebelled against it.
... ... ...
The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over
the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated
purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many
elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise
in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag
is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.
... ... ...
Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively
after the Great Recession to benefit themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting
decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates over many years, accompanied
by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and
corporate America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings
accounts. The result, says economic consultant David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer
, was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests
in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial
transactions, divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating,
and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial zest, generate new enterprises,
and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of
the U.S. economy-more and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and
fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.
...Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid
of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy -- the status quo ante, before
the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so much talk
about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors."
That's why the firing of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday
Night Massacre."
That's why the demonization of Russia has reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even
minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and threat.
... ... ...
There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly
problematic. A push to remove him could prove worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself.
But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity, merely the
Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.
IMHO Trump betrayal of his voters under the pressure from DemoRats ("the dominant neoliberal
wing of Democratic Party", aka "Clinton's wing") makes the situation even worse. a real Gordian
knot. Or, in chess terminology, a Zugzwang.
"... America is in crisis. It is a crisis of greater magnitude than any the country has faced in its history, with the exception of the Civil War. It is a crisis long in the making-and likely to be with us long into the future. It is a crisis so thoroughly rooted in the American polity that it's difficult to see how it can be resolved in any kind of smooth or even peaceful way. Looking to the future from this particular point in time, just about every possible course of action appears certain to deepen the crisis. ..."
"... Some believe it stems specifically from the election of Donald Trump, a man supremely unfit for the presidency, and will abate when he can be removed from office. These people are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job. But that isn't the central crisis; it is merely a symptom of it, though it seems increasingly to be reaching crisis proportions of its own. ..."
"... The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes. ..."
"... "Elites" are not necessarily truly unique, "brights" are not necessarily truly bright, "gnostics" do not necessarily have true knowledge, "puritans" are not necessarily truly pure, etc. What is being labeled is not what they truly are, but what they would have us believe they are; the reality is often very much the contrary. ..."
"... What characterizes "elites" is not really position or power, very much less intelligence or nobility of heart. The defining characteristic of an "elite" is arrogance. ..."
America is in crisis. It is a crisis of greater magnitude than any the country has faced in its history, with the exception of
the Civil War. It is a crisis long in the making-and likely to be with us long into the future. It is a crisis so thoroughly rooted
in the American polity that it's difficult to see how it can be resolved in any kind of smooth or even peaceful way. Looking to the
future from this particular point in time, just about every possible course of action appears certain to deepen the crisis.
What is it? Some believe it stems specifically from the election of Donald Trump, a man supremely unfit for the presidency,
and will abate when he can be removed from office. These people are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his
White House job. But that isn't the central crisis; it is merely a symptom of it, though it seems increasingly to be reaching crisis
proportions of its own.
When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation's elites, it's a strong signal that
the elites are the problem. We're talking here about the elites of both parties. Think of those who gave the country Hillary Clinton
as the Democratic presidential nominee-a woman who sought to avoid accountability as secretary of state by employing a private email
server, contrary to propriety and good sense; who attached herself to a vast nonprofit "good works" institution that actually was
a corrupt political machine designed to get the Clintons back into the White House while making them rich; who ran for president,
and almost won, without addressing the fundamental problems of the nation and while denigrating large numbers of frustrated and beleaguered
Americans as "deplorables." The unseemliness in all this was out in plain sight for everyone to see, and yet Democratic elites blithely
went about the task of awarding her the nomination, even to the point of employing underhanded techniques to thwart an upstart challenger
who was connecting more effectively with Democratic voters.
At least Republican elites resisted the emergence of Trump for as long as they could. Some even attacked him vociferously. But,
unlike in the Democratic Party, the Republican candidate who most effectively captured the underlying sentiment of GOP voters ended
up with the nomination. The Republican elites had to give way. Why? Because Republican voters fundamentally favor vulgar, ill-mannered,
tawdry politicians? No, because the elite-generated society of America had become so bad in their view that they turned to the man
who most clamorously rebelled against it.
The crisis of the elites could be seen everywhere. Take immigration policy. Leave aside for purposes of discussion the debate
on the merits of the issue-whether mass immigration is good for America or whether it reaches a point of economic diminishing returns
and threatens to erode America's underlying culture. Whatever the merits on either side of that debate, mass immigration, accepted
and even fostered by the nation's elites, has driven a powerful wedge through America. Couldn't those elites see that this would
happen? Did they care so little about the polity over which they held stewardship that their petty political prejudices were more
important than the civic health of their nation?
So now we have some 11 million illegal immigrants in America, a rebuke to territorial sovereignty and to the rule of law upon
which our nation was founded, with no reasonable solution-and generating an abundance of political tension. Beyond that, we have
fostered an immigration policy that now has foreign-born people in America approaching 14 percent-a proportion unprecedented in American
history except for the 1920s, the last time a backlash against mass immigration resulted in curtailment legislation.
And yet the elites never considered the importance to the country's civic health of questions related to assimilation-what's an
appropriate inflow for smooth absorption. Some even equated those who raised such questions to racists and xenophobes. Meanwhile,
we have "sanctuary cities" throughout Blue State America that are refusing to cooperate with federal officials seeking to enforce
the immigration laws-the closest we have come as a nation to "nullification" since the actual nullification crisis of the 1830s,
when South Carolina declared its right to ignore federal legislation it didn't like. (Andrew Jackson scotched the movement by threatening
to hang from the nearest tree anyone involved in violence stemming from the crisis.)
Then there is the spectacle of the country's financial elites goosing liquidity massively after the Great Recession to benefit
themselves while slamming ordinary Americans with a resulting decline in Main Street capitalism. The unprecedented low interest rates
over many years, accompanied by massive bond buying called "quantitative easing," proved a boon for Wall Street banks and corporate
America while working families lost income from their money market funds and savings accounts. The result, says economic consultant
David M. Smick, author of The Great Equalizer , was "the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial
interests in the history of mankind." Notice that these post-recession transactions were mostly financial transactions, divorced
from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating, and taking risks-the kinds of activities that spur entrepreneurial
zest, generate new enterprises, and create jobs. Thus did this economic turn of events reflect the financialization of the U.S. economy-more
and more rewards for moving money around and taking a cut and fewer and fewer rewards for building a business and creating jobs.
And, though these policies were designed to boost economic growth, they have failed to do so, as America suffered through one
of the longest periods of mediocre growth in its history.
All this contributed significantly to the hollowing out of the American working class-once the central foundation of the country's
economic muscle and political stability. Now these are the forgotten Americans, deplorable to Hillary Clinton and her elite followers,
left without jobs and increasingly bereft of purpose and hope.
And if they complain they find themselves confronting the forces of political correctness, bent on shutting them up and marginalizing
them in the political arena. For all the conservative and mainstream complaints against political correctness over the years, it
was never clear just how much civic frustration and anger it was generating across the country until Donald Trump unfurled his attack
on the phenomenon in his campaign. Again, it was ordinary Americans against the elites.
The elites also ran American foreign policy, as they have throughout U.S. history. Over the past 25 years they got their country
bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen,
Libya. Many elites want further U.S. military action in Ukraine, against Iran, and to thwart China's rise in Asia. Aside from the
risk of growing geopolitical blowback against America, the price tag is immense, contributing to the country's ongoing economic woes.
When Trump, marshaling this anti-elite resentment into a powerful political wave, won the presidential election last November,
it was noted that he would be a minority president in the popular vote. But then so was Nixon; so was Clinton; so was Wilson; indeed,
so was Lincoln. The Trump victory constituted a political revolution.
Now comes the counterrevolution. The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they
consider normalcy-the status quo ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America. That's why there is so
much talk about impeachment even in the absence of any evidence thus far of "high crimes and misdemeanors." That's why the firing
of James Comey as FBI director raises the analogy of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre." That's why the demonization of Russia has
reached a fevered pitch, in hopes that even minor infractions on the part of the president can be raised to levels of menace and
threat.
Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist, even suggests the elites of Washington should get rid of Trump
through the use of the Constitution's 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of the president if a majority of the cabinet
informs the Congress that he is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and if a two-thirds vote of Congress confirms
that judgment in the face of a presidential challenge. This was written of course for such circumstances of presidential incapacity
as ill health or injury, but Douthat's commitment to the counterrevolution is such that he would advocate its use for mere presidential
incompetence.
Consider the story of Trump's revelation of classified information to Russia's foreign minister and ambassador to the United States.
No one disputes the president's right to declassify governmental information at will, but was it wise in this instance? Certainly,
it was reckless if he exposed sources and methods of intelligence gathering. But did he?
The president and his top foreign policy advisers, who were present during the conversation, say he didn't. The media and Trump's
political adversaries insist that he did, at least implicitly. We don't know. But we do know that when this story reached the pages
of The Washington Post , as a result of leaks from people around Trump who want to see him crushed, it led to a feeding frenzy
that probably harmed American interests far more than whatever Trump may have said to those Russians. Instead of Trump's indiscretion
being confined to a single conversation with foreign officials, it now is broadcast throughout the world. Instead of, at worst, a
hint of where the intelligence came from, everyone now knows it came from the Israelis. Instead of being able to at least pursue
a more cooperative relationship with Russia on matters of mutual interest, Trump is once again forced back on his heels on Russian
policy by government officials and their media allies-who, unlike Trump, were never elected to anything.
Thus is the Trump crisis now superimposed upon the much broader and deeper crisis of the elites, which spawned the Trump crisis
in the first place. Yes, Trump is a disaster as president. He lacks nearly all the qualities and attributes a president should have,
and three and a half more years of him raises the specter of more and more unnecessary tumult and deepening civic rancor. It could
even prove to be untenable governmentally. But trying to get rid of him before his term expires, absent a clear constitutional justification
and a clear assent from the collective electorate, will simply deepen the crisis, driving the wedge further into the raw American
heartland and generating growing feelings that the American system has lost its legitimacy.
There is no way out for America at this point. Steady as she goes could prove highly problematic. A push to remove him could prove
worse. Perhaps a solution will present itself. But, even if it does, it will rectify, with great societal disquiet and animosity,
merely the Trump crisis. The crisis of the elites will continue, all the more intractable and ominous.
Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is editor of The American Conservative
. His next book, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century
, is due out from Simon & Schuster in September.
If you want to know why things are as bad as they are and why Americans are so ignorant and dumbed down, get the video "Agenda"
by Curtis Bower. It explains it all.
I agree with your diagnosis, even if the term "elite" is nebulous (aren't you, Mr. Merry, by virtue of your position as a D.C.-based
journalist, an "elite"?). Anyway, Gilens and Page found as much.
Yeah this whole "elite" thing is kind of frustrating to hash out in good faith sometimes of course we want "elite" people in charge,
in the sense that they're not illiterate imbeciles. The funny thing is how much "democracy" often fails those who are most wont
to sing its praises. Those who identify as liberal tend to romanticize the idea of "the people" and their right to have a voice
in our government, but then are sorely disappointed when those actual people exercise that voice in the real world. It's why most
of the liberal social agenda of the past 50 years has been achieved through the courts, the least democratic institutions in our
polity. "The people" wouldn't have voted for most of this stuff.
Since a lot of people are obviously having trouble with this concept: "Elites" are not necessarily truly unique, "brights"
are not necessarily truly bright, "gnostics" do not necessarily have true knowledge, "puritans" are not necessarily truly pure,
etc. What is being labeled is not what they truly are, but what they would have us believe they are; the reality is often very
much the contrary.
What characterizes "elites" is not really position or power, very much less intelligence or nobility of heart. The defining
characteristic of an "elite" is arrogance.
Saying "elites are the problem" is NOT to say "let us eliminate all elites" (duh). It is instead to say "let us get ourselves
different elites".
A good elite is one which uses its talents and power to pursue the common good. A bad elite is one which uses its talents and
power to pursue the good of elites alone. After deindustrialization and financialization and the Iraq War and the financial crisis
and the Great Recession and the White Death combined with the ever growing wealth and power of what Richard Reeves calls the "
dream hoarders ", it's pretty clear that we have
bad elites.
This is not to say that the masses are completely off the hook. A republic requires a virtuous elite AND virtuous masses. As
Rod Dreher notes endlessly, the American masses aren't too virtuous nowadays, either.
Cheap, imported labor lowers wages and improves profits. Moving manufacturing to China lowers wages and improves profits. Reducing
income from savings forces people into the labor force, lowering wages and increasing profits. Labor's share of national income
is at a low-point not seen since the 1920's. Corporate profitability is at an historical high point.
I don't understand what "crisis" is being spoken of here. Isn't this exactly the scenario we have been attempting to create
since Reagan? There is no crisis. This is the fruition of our conservative economic agenda. Isn't this site called "The American
Conservative"?
"Couldn't those elites see that this would happen? Did they care so little about the polity over which they held stewardship that
their petty political prejudices were more important than the civic health of their nation?"
"Over the past 25 years they got their country bogged down in persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances
no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya."
Good points. Now you may apprehend why we simple people are not so eager to react with panic to the hysteria being drummed
up by the same "elite" people and institutions that melt down every time Trump walks out of his office.
Who are these "elites"? This is the central question.
They seem to be: [1] highly educated [2] in private colleges and universities [3] mainly in the Northeast [4] and as adults
[5] employed primarily in professional occupations [6] geographically concentrated in the Boston-Washington corridor, especially
in NYC and DC.
The unparalleled expansion of the (mostly white) educated professional class in the DC area over the past generation should
occupy center stage in any conservative critique of the American elite.
if President Donald J Trump IS supremely unfit to hold the office, does that not logically (in the eyes of the author)not
make the xx million American people who voted for him supremely unfit to vote?
Not at all. It makes them supremely desperate. The most important part of the election takes place before the first primary,
when PACs and party officials determine what choices will be put before voters. Their candidates (from both parties) were likewise
supremely unfit. I don't care much for either the Libertarians or Abe Lincoln, but
Dead Abe Lincoln got one thing right: "Oh, hey America
you just got screwed." Frankly, this has been going on for decades, but it is now reaching levels of abject absurdity.
What Bruce said. In addition: who could possibly be so simple-minded as to believe that the removal of Trump will magically fix
government? Bottom line is, Trump is dangerously incompetent. There are no doubt some in gov't who would get rid of Trump for
the wrong reasons, but there are many (too many) right reasons for doing so. Some of the so-called Deep Staters will be Republicans
who understand that Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" was nothing more than an empty talking point - and more importantly,
that he's a threat to national security. Getting rid of Trump would be just one step toward fixing gov't, but would be significant
nonetheless.
Actually, Bruce, some of us lefties agree with much, though not all of what Merry says. The elites in both parties have failed
and if you want names one can go down a long list. On foreign policy, for instance, leaders in both parties like Clinton and McCain
have consistently favored more intervention and more war. The only time Trump has been popular with the elites is when he bombed
Syria.
This post was already pretty long– if Merry had gone into detail on the financial crisis and foreign policy it would have been
ten times longer.
I despise Trump too. The problem is that many of his critics are cynical opportunists.
"So tell me, if the down trodden Working class is so distraught by the elites putting them down, why do they celebrate when the
GOP House voted to take away their healthcare by removing rules on pre-existing conditions."
How you view the policies on pre-existing conditions depends on whether you are looking at premiums or benefits. If you are
looking at premiums then removing rules on pre-existing conditions will benefit you. If you are looking at benefits no so much.
You can't say that lowering premiums doesn't help working class families. There is also a fairness issue. The pre-existing exclusion
only kicks in if there has been a lapse in coverage which encourages some people to not pay into the insurance pool until they
get sick. How is that fair to all the folks who paid their premiums even when they didn't avail themselves of healthcare services?
The proposed plan only asks those who haven't been paying into the system to pay more to make the system more fair to those who
paid all along. It doesn't deny people coverage for pre-existing conditions. They can also avoid the higher payments by making
sure their coverage doesn't lapse. Yes there are those who let their coverage lapse due to a financial crisis and we do need to
have programs to assist those who truly can't pay.
Bruce's comment is nonsense. The elites are not in the least vague and unnamed, plainly referring to the mainstream "news" media
and professoriate and GOP and corporate chiefs eager for cheap labor and GOP renegades (most of them warmongers) displeased by
being upstaged. He purports to want "real" solutions but is quick to condemn real limits on immigration and trade deficits and
racism in the guise of affirmative action and comparable ornaments of "social justice." Then, those who resent the liberal status
quo and don't share Bruce's values are child-like and paranoid.
Such arrogant and abusive views as his scarcely deserve refutation.
"The elites" aren't the problem, using the phrase "the elites" in political debate is the problem. What elites, exactly, do NOT
include Trump, the nepotistic New York billionaire whose father donated a building to get him into Wharton? "Elites" is the code
word used by right wing propagandists when they're trying to induce gullible or resentful citizens into acting against their own
interests. Anyone using the term is dishonest.
John D. King contends: " corporate chiefs eager for cheap labor " are among the elites voters shunned when voting for Pres. Trump.
Um corporate chief? Donald Trump. Eager for cheap labor? Donald Trump. Elite? Donald Trump? Sending his son to an elite school
that costs as much as the school that Obama sent his daughters to? Donald Trump. The only thing about Donald Trump that isn't
elite is his drunken boor (even though he doesn't drink) rhetoric and social skills which he uses to mask his elitism. If you
want no more than symbolic anti-elitism, Donald Trump is your man, and that's what Donald Trump supporters seem to want: the feeling
that they are superior to those whom they feel have put them down for years, instead of the skills enabling them to compete with
and perhaps surpass the people they deride as elite. Meanwhile the substance of Donald Trump's life has been elitism since he
was in business school about a half century ago. No reason to believe that will change, is there?
Bob Halvorsen wrote: "Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise? The only
presidents with a minority of the popular vote are JQ Adams, Hayes, Harrison and Bush."
The author wrote "minority in the popular vote". To me that means LESS than 50% of the irrelevant national popular vote total.
The author is NOT saying that the presidents listed did not get the most votes in the irrelevant national popular vote, just that
they received less than 50% of the total.
Nixon 1968 – 43.4%
Clinton 1992 – 43%
Clinton 1996 – 49.2%
Wilson 1912 – 41.8%
Lincoln 1860 – 39.8%
Mueller's appointment sounds promising, all powerful politicians should be investigated if there's smoke, if not fire.
But this discussion of elites conjures up a counter-factual President Hillary, elected President with a Democratically-controlled
House, Senate, and solid 5-vote majority on the Supreme Court:
Given her campaign's numerous contacts with the Russian ambassador last year, along with an ongoing FBI investigation into
the Clinton Foundation, including but not limited to the Russian uranium agreement, State Dept. pressuring Kazakhstan to sign
off, after which donations were made, and Bill's speaking fees going up, other pay-to-play allegations involving some very nasty
governments in Africa and the Middle East
There would be no DOJ investigation, and no Special Counsel appointed. Even had she fired Comey herself on Day One. Impossible
to prove, but none of this would be happening. And I doubt the press at large would be clamoring for investigations, because there
wouldn't be any leaking going on.
If elites are good at anything, it's circumventing the rule of law by stonewalling, or burying, all investigations into wrongdoing.
The Obama DOJ excelled greatly at that sort of thing
For those of us who elected Donald Trump our President, Mr. Merry, your type of analysis is the most dangerous!
On the one hand, you point to the root of the problems: "The elites are the problem."
You correctly identify some of the main reasons why we elected Donald Trump: "[1] The hollowing out of the American working
class '[2] the greatest transfer of middle-class and elderly wealth to elite financial interests in the history of mankind' [3]
persistent wars with hardly any stated purpose and in many instances no end in sight-Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya [4]
11 million illegal immigrants in America, a rebuke to territorial sovereignty and to the rule of law upon which our nation was
founded."
But then – having admitted that "Removing Trump Won't Solve America's Crisis" – you spout the elites' main talking point in
their war to overturn the election results and to get rid of Donald Trump. You trumpet the elites' biggest lie. You say: "These
people [the elites] are right about one thing: Trump is supremely unfit for his White House job."
You are wrong, Mr. Merry. Totally wrong! President Trump is supremely qualified, and for these reasons:
• He was the only presidential candidate with the courage to stand up and identify the real problems that have been destroying
America and
• He was the only candidate with the courage to stand up to the elites and not to back down.
You say, Mr. Merry, that "three and a half more years of [Trump] raises the specter of more and more unnecessary tumult."
You're wrong again. The tumult is entirely necessary. In fact the tumult is inevitable because we Americans have finally elected
a President who is not afraid to speak to America's real problems. We have finally elected a President who has the guts to stand
up to the powerful elites who created these problems. We have finally elected a President who will fight for us – fight for us
and not back down!
The elites don't like what they see. They don't like Trump and they don't like us, because we put Trump in the White House.
Those of us who elected Donald Trump President because he fights for us are willing and able to fight for him!
"The elites figure that if they can just get rid of Trump, the country can return to what they consider normalcy-the status quo
ante, before the Trumpian challenge to their status as rulers of America."
I don't agree at all with this assessment of what the "elites" want or expect.
I believe that the strong following Bernie Sanders had–and still has– is indicative of the large numbers of Americans who find
the the "status quo" a questionable way to proceed.
This is not an endorsement of Bernie Sanders or a lamentation that he didn't get the nomination, it is just a clarification of
terms of "what the elite want" i.e. you're barking up the wrong tree.
Also not sure who you consider an elite; the whole article seems based on flimsy assumptions.
I am thinking more and more that our only hope is partition. If California wants to let half of Mexico in, go for it. Just
don't ask Idaho or Montana to send you water when you run out. If New England and New York want to be run by Wall Street capitalists
with SJW social views, go for it. Encourage your working class and middle class people to move to the South or the Midwest and
you can be just like Brazil! A nice place to vacation run by very rich people, but inhabited by mostly poor people. Another benefit
of partition would be that the Ununited States would not have the size or resources to be the world's policeman. Sounds like a
win for almost everybody but the neo-cons and the liberal interventionists.
To be honest, I don't really agree with the thesis of this article. The idea of elite as pejoratives seems out of place with the
usage in other contexts and suggests we need a clearer articulation of what exactly it is we are angry about. This being said,
regardless of where the problem lies, these so called "elites" have done an amazing job of turning the political machine to their
advantage. We elected them – we elected Trump. I guess the thing I come back to is we need to stop seeking evidence of why we
are right and start seeking evidence of why we are wrong – especially when it comes to candidates. I honestly don't know what
this would look like or if it would be possible – but I feel like we need to change the way we know and evaluate candidates. It
feels clear to me that the things we use as yardsticks fail us and warrants a re-imaging of how we determine fitness for public
positions.
The term "elite" might well mean nothing more than "educated and knowledgeable and experienced." We can see what happens when
a rich person seems uneducated in world history, uneducated in our form or government and shows no leadership qualities for running
a government. He is not an elite. He is a bozo. Michael Jordan was an "elite" basketball player. Do you want anything less in
the top ranks of government?
The term "elite" has a negative tone for those who do not understand how difficult issues are. As was said "I never knew how
complicated health care was." And this bozo was elected.
You can only blame the elites so much in a democracy. We elect presidents who appoint judges that say corporations have a constitutional
right to give unlimited campaign contributions to politicians who work for them. We often confuse supporting our troops for supporting
whatever war they're sent to. We want to cut taxes but we also want more warplanes. We spend more than any other country on healthcare
and complain about costs but we reject systems other countries use that are proven more efficient. We spend much time complaining
about elites but, with few exceptions, we keep electing them.
Kurt Gayle: "You correctly identify some of the main reasons why we elected Donald Trump: "
Perfectly valid reasons. Unfortunately, a perfectly wrong candidate and a perfectly wrong party to support. For most of the
issues cited (excepting immigration), you'd really want a Progressive. Trump and the GOP were never going to 'clean out the swamp'
(he opened the gates to the swamp), never going to try reversing the flow of wealth away from the poor & middle classes, never
de-escalate military conflict, and never going to wrest control from "financialists".
For that work, Trump is unqualified, slow to learn and has demonstrated a disquieting disinterest in actual details.
I agree with most of the objectives you mention, but Trump was never even close to being right person for the job. Better to
wash your hands of this Administration and move on.
" The term "The Deep State" being latest iteration, allowing anybody to speculate and project their own predjudices and paranoias
as to these dark and unnamed forces as well comfortably allowing us each to excuse our own failures as being secretly the fault
of some vague and unnamed "them"."
Deep State theory originated in the New Left as a response to the Kennedy assassination, for instance with the works of Carl
Oglesby and Peter Dale Scott, who was using the phrase "deep politics" decades ago not the only way in which the modern GOP base
has started to sound like left-wingers from the old days, but one of the more surprising.
I could pretty readily contradict some of the article's details, but I will skip that in order to agree with the basic premise.
Yes, the Trump and Bernie Sanders phenomena signify a dissatisfaction with elitism. However, solutions not only exist, but abound.
One in particular presents itself as not only advisable, but as a necessary condition: I will present only that one possibility
here.
As long as big money can buy elections, elitists will rule and the masses will get shafted. The only way to keep that from
happening in perpetuity is to establish a system of public funding for elections.
Absent that change, there really is no hope. We might not like it, and we might be forced to revisit principles we thought
inviolate, but it is a necessary condition of restoring government of, by, and for the people.
The problem with our elites is they do well when the rest of the country is going down the drain.
Most of the blame attaches to Republican elites but the Dems are not immune.
Since Reagan's election and the start of the libertarian takeover of the Republican party, America has shredded the social
contract we have with one another. No more we're-in-this-together. No more we-are-our-brother's-keeper.
Instead of decent middle class jobs with all the benefits, we've moved toward a gig economy where everyone is always hustling
for the next job/client. Which the New Yorker recently called the work-until-you-die economy.
Yes, if you're talented and lucky - the Yankees bringing you up from the minors, Paramount pictures distributing the movie
you financed with credit cards, your start-up getting acquired by Microsoft - it is easier than before to become successful.
But if you're a temporary receptionist at a law firm or driving for Uber . . .
We've wrecked all the countervailing powers that inhibited capital from overwhelming labor. The share of US income going to
capital (dividends, interest, capital gains) versus labor (paychecks) has soared.
Unions are dead. Infrastructure and other public spending is gone. NAFTA was supposed to come with support for workers whose
jobs went to Mexico but Bob Dole didn't believe in coddling losers.
For-profit education and soaring tuition with bankruptcy law no longer permitting discharge of student load debt. How are those
kids ever going to afford to buy the houses older people are counting on to finance their retirements?
Years without increases in the minimum wage. (Minimum wage is the reference wage for most other wages. Up the minimum wage
and everyone earning a paycheck will soon get a raise too.)
That's what libertarians did to the Republican party and then to America. We stopped caring about the well-being of our fellow
citizens because everything is a business deal between two self-interested parties. That's how you think on Wall Street and Silicon
Valley. (And in 2008-09, when Wall Street drove the economy off a cliff, ordinary Americans bailed out the bankers.)
But if you're an out-of-work steelworker addicted to opiates? Your bad choices are not my problem.
The poster child for elites who no longer care about ordinary Americans is Pete Peterson of Blackstone. Remember his dog and
pony show about federal govt's looming fiscal crisis? His solution was to gut entitlement spending that's probably keeping a lot
of people alive.
And here's the kicker: nothing about this fiscal crisis was so severe that a solution would require billionaires like Peterson
to tighten their belts.
Trump and Sanders picked up on the rage and despair that ordinary citizens feel for our elites and what they're doing to our
country. Hillary and the rest of the Republican candidates misread the mood.
Trump is now proposing the same old Republican agenda. Tax cuts for the rich to be financed by gutting Obamacare. More deregulation
and less public spending.
Yes, America is in crisis. Support for democratic norms is razor-thin and declining.
This country needs to recommit to a social contract. And a social safety net. We're all in this together. The rich can't do
well at the expense of everyone else if this country is to live up to our ideals.
Back in the 1950s, the head of General Motors told a congressional hearing that he always thought that what was good for GM
was good for America and what was good for America was good for GM. He got laughed at. But he was right. If he's selling cars,
it means people are feeling good about their prospects.
I'm waiting for a presidential candidate who promises that the rich are going to bear the biggest share of the burden when
Americans roll up our sleeves to fix our country. He'll win in a landslide.
If wealth equals power then the only way you are going to limit the power of the elites is by massive campaign reform that would
curtail the influence the wealth of the elites currently has over the political process. Neither Republicans or Democrats have
shown the slightest interest in meaningful campaign reform for the simple reason that it is easier fund a campaign with millions
from the elites who donate directly to a campaign and indirectly through a PAC. Without meaningful campaign reform the US will
slowly but surely slip from being a democracy to an oligarchy run by the elites for the benefit of the elites. The crisis in the
US is that it seems most citizens seem willing to accept that because of their wealth the elites are more likely to know how to
govern. Sadly these citizens are having to learn that being a wealthy elite like Trump does not automatically mean that he knows
how to govern.
As a moderate lifelong Republican, I was a NeverTrumper through the primaries where my guy (Rubio) did well in my state, winning
the contest. Only after Trump prevailed did I go off for a few hours on a long walk to contemplate what this meant for me, my
party and my nation. I concluded that Trump was a necessary evil if we were serious about giving the 100,000,000 working men and
women in this country a fair shake at the American Dream. Someone had to be ballsy enough to reconstruct the Federal Bureacracy
and anyone less than a guy like Trump would wilt in the heat generated by the left leaning media and left leaning Federal Bureaucracy.
Let's face it. Had HRC won absolutely nothing would have changed except our acceptance of corruption in our body politic. I
still have hope that the Federal Government can be right-sized and the power redistributed to the United States of America not
DC.
Therein lies the fight of our time. We can either concede the fight and let DC make all the decisions (including whether to
fix the pot holes on my local streets)to we can ask what each citizen can do for his or her country. It's a binary choice really.
You either believe that all the power should reside with the Feds and the dictates and mandates that go with power being held
1000 miles away .or you're in favor of 95% of the decisions that impact you locally and in your state.
If you need to find out where someone sits on this issue, ask them 2 simple questions.
1) Who is Joe Biden?
2) Name just 2 people from all of the following: Who's your Mayor? City Council? County Commission? School Board? State Senator?
State Rep? Lt. Governor? School Board?
The Trump era will be cathartic or emetic. Government operations will be so confused and erratic that people will start to think
that maybe elite rule wasn't so bad and will look forward to "the grown-ups" taking over again. Of course, every new administration
now claims to be "the grown-ups" reasserting themselves - that's come to be a given - but those pretensions will be taken more
seriously when the next administration takes over.
So are the elites to blame? Well, in a way. They have their agenda, and it's not always shared by ordinary Americans. But ordinary
Americans don't agree with each other all that often, and depending on what the issue is, some parts of the general public are
closer to the governing elites than they are to other parts of the public. It could be that elites manage to get enough support
from non-elite voters to stay in office.
But also, competence is a factor. There are a lot of conspiracy theories about elites, but much of the energy of governing
elites may go into being just well-informed enough to do a half-way credible job of staying on top of events, rather than into
deep-laid plans to thwart popular wishes.
"All this contributed significantly to the hollowing out of the American working class-once the central foundation of the country's
economic muscle and political stability. Now these are the forgotten Americans, deplorable to Hillary Clinton and her elite followers,
left without jobs and increasingly bereft of purpose and hope."
Nice try.
Three things led to the "hollowing out" of the American working class, and they have nothing to do with ephemeral vaporings
about "divorced from the traditional American passion for building things, innovating, and taking risks."
1. Automation – and there's just no way around that – the semi-skilled and some skilled jobs giving lower-educated workers
a strong middle class life are gone.
2. "Reagan Democrats" who've been voting staunchly Republican and stood by watching and nodding while conservatives have eviscerated
and vilified union jobs that also supported a middle class lifestyle (see, e.g., "right-to-work" states).
3. Globalization (abetted by both parties) that shipped these jobs overseas – although there's no clear solution to this in
an emergent 21st-century global economy.
Look, I grew up outside of Detroit and knew families and friends who didn't go to college, but went to work on the line and
could afford a middle class life. For the reasons listed above, those days are gone forever.
Who are these "elites"? This is the central question.
They seem to be: [1] highly educated [2] in private colleges and universities [3] mainly in the Northeast [4] and as adults
[5] employed primarily in professional occupations [6] geographically concentrated in the Boston-Washington corridor, especially
in NYC and DC.
Using that definition, the author of this post is an elite. But I bet he claims he is not.
The thing is, Mr. Merry is a journalist. I'm hearing a lot about how dastardly THEY are from Trump supporters.
As long as big money can buy elections, elitists will rule and the masses will get shafted. The only way to keep that from
happening in perpetuity is to establish a system of public funding for elections.
I agree wholeheartedly. Does anyone who is not rich think that money = speech? What other democracy has an election funding
system as bizarre as ours?
Trump's "populism" is based on the same old demagogue's standbys: xenophobia, scapegoating, racism, anti-intellectualism, economic
anxiety, nationalism, and a yearning for an idealized past that never existed. The idea of Trump as some shirt-sleeved populist
warrior who is going to correct the inequities of wealth distribution in the U.S. is too laughable to bother with. I would refer
anyone to the two health care bills he has championed so far, which were poorly disguised attempts to enrich the wealthy even
further, while robbing tens of millions of their ability to afford health insurance.
Sorry, but the problem is not the "elite" but the "elitists": them that's curried favor-always monetary-w/ other elitists in exchange
for donations at election time. With Clinton & Trump, we had two elitists that thought they deserved the pres'y & were propelled
by the elitists running the campaigns & parties that hoped to gain from either of those two in the W.H.
Meanwhile, the press worked feverishly to turn Clinton & Trump into viable candidates-w/ ancient, useless labels like "liberal,"
progressive"; "anti-establishment," "populist"-& convinced voters that they were the "best men" for the job.
So I ended up voting for our state's Repo. gov.; who in turn voted for his own father, an 88-yr-old former congressman. That
was effect elitists had on some of us.
April 25, 2017 Ex-spy admits anti-Trump dossier unverified, blames Buzzfeed for publishing
In a court filing, Mr. Steele also says his accusations against the president and his aides about a supposed Russian hacking
conspiracy were never supposed to be made public, much less posted in full on a website for the world to see on Jan. 10. He defends
himself by saying he was betrayed by his client and that he followed proper internal channels by giving the dossier to Sen. John
McCain, Arizona Republican, to alert the U.S. government.
"Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise?"
Because the author is letting his partisanship relive him of his good sense. Or he is as numerically challenged as his president,
who knows?
These people won PLURALITIES of the popular vote. So did Hillary Clinton. They all received the most votes in an election with
three or more candidates but received less votes than the total that voted for some one else. Everyone on the planet besides third-world
dictators and Republicans generally describe this phenomenon as "winning an election".
A plurality is very different from getting a minority of the vote like Trump did. I am sure that Merry knows this. If you don't
believe me, go ask the folks who voted Green and Libertarian who they would have voted for as a second choice if they were forced
to
And BTW, a lot of those immigrants (to whom I do not object) are here because of America's fascination with foreign wars and
intrusions. Think "boat people," for example, or Iranian refugees or Cuban, etc., etc. Our stupidity produces moral obligations.
Contra the demos-fueled hissy-fit over "Elites", I have no problem with Elites running the world. For one thing, they (Elites)
always have run the world, and that isn't going to change, except cosmetically.
Nor do I have a problem with them reasonably rewarding themselves for their efforts.
Experiments with direct participatory democracy have usually ended in the sort of lynch-mobbing which murdered Socrates.
I have neither time nor interest in attending to every pettyfrogging detail of running a village government, let alone one
of 300 million souls. Even with the Internet, "direct democracy" ends up being run by a few (reference Athens, if any doubt).
The current outrage-aholic fixation over "elites" is not because they are Elites, but because they are INCOMPETENT Elites.
It is said the Brits lost the Empire because they forgot how to govern, and now, it is our turn.
Eric Hoffer told us how Elites fall back in 1950 (The True Believer), but we were so fat and happy we ignored what he said.
Besides, he was a longshoreman, with no credentials. What did he know?
My preference is for Them to fix Their problem, and to get back running affairs properly.
Then I can focus on playing with my grandkids, flirting with my wife, and drinking beer in late afternoon with Old Blue at
my feet.
Well, he talks and tweets a lot. But NAFTA is still in force (he learned of downsides of ash canning it), Iran sanctions have
not been increased (maybe he thought of jobs related to jet sales important), he is talking with Russia (as opposed to talking
about it), and has let all know about his aversion to gassing civilians.
Let us continue to observe what he does, not what he tweets. I plan to come back in late July and take a look, 100 days just
is too short to come to a decision.
So true. Another of the few sane voices, with intellectual heft to match that sobriety. Wish Rod Dreher would read and be convinced
by your salient analysis, even if against his will. I think too many conservatives genuflect to established hierarchy, whatever
its faults, out of a character that is disposed to distrust change, even needed change. I myself do not buy into the reasoning,
"better the devil we know." I really think only the relatively well off can sustain such a view, whether in Manhattan or connected
to it via the internet in Baton Rouge. The rest of us are too desperate.
The elites truly are the problem. Just like those who blame Russia, they won't take ownership. They will need one heckuva Homeland
Security and clampdown on the population they view as intolerable, once they have their coup against democracy. It is certain
to be a pyrrhic victory though, as no elites in history ever gave up their power willingly or peacefully, yet in every case they
were forcibly removed in paroxysms of violence by angry mobs of citizens who lost faith in a rigged system that would not allow
needed peaceful change.
So Trump lacks all the qualities and attributes of a proper President. What exactly are those qualities beyond getting elected?
Who are the great examples Trump should imitate? Let's see, the community organizer? The son of a Bush? The man from Hope? Poppy
Bush? I am one who admired Reagan but he did run up the debt. The quality these people share is a ludicrous vanity. Can't understand
the notion that Trump is far below the rest of these flawed human beings. He seems to be just another one. What the heck, he might
turn out to be effective. It is way too early to know.
Very true. The elites want to turf Trump because he is jeopardising a model that sustains their salaries and prestige, yet of
course they can still not offer an alternative to what was there before.
The elites can't look outside the system, to something beyond the system, because that is, by definition, something they can't
control or make false promises about. The deeper problem is they are unwilling to even have this conversation, for fear it would
lead to a logical conclusion about the inadequacies of power.
What a bore and a canard; Trump_vs_deep_state has shown itself in capable of competent and capable public policy; quick on the trigger to
tear everything down but in coherent and undisciplined to build anything of consequence to replace it. I'll take the elites any
day over nihilism and petulance. Trump is the mirror image of his voters and it gives me great satisfaction to see their political
fortunes grind to dust Over their own incompetence.
Meh. People keep screaming about a "crisis" but aren't able to actually point to one. The economy is doing well. Crime is at historic
lows. There are so few actual problems that people are taking to manufacturing them (e.g. opioids).
I think the real issue here is that the politically-powerful Baby Boom is approaching the final years of its narcissistic,
navel-gazing existence, and assumes the entire world disappears when they do.
This article does a good job stitching together much of the Elites' sins. It is apparent to me that the American government can't
be reformed from within by electing reform candidates. If reform is possible, it can't come from the Northeast and West Coast.
It will never come from a Harvard, or any other Ivy League school, graduate. It won't come from a Boston Catholic person or New
York Jewish-American. It won't come from a Baby Boomer who wishes to continue to prop up the social changes they ushered in the
60s and 70s. I would expect actual reform to come from a young person in the American Heartland, which the bi-coastal elites deride
as "Flyover Country." Wasn't it the "Rust Belt" who showed us the way in the 2016 election? And if and when reform (i.e. the non-violent
neutering of the Elites' power abuses) comes, the reformers had better be prepared with a total package and not just one candidate.
It may be a one-time opportunity, and must be executed with the utmost strategy and determination.
But We Trump supporters are quite happy with his actions so far. We know the press is rigged against him. It is distressing to
see the elitist Republicans attack him too though. You are right about the divide, but this may be our last best hope of taking
the government back
if President Donald J Trump IS supremely unfit to hold the office, does that not logically (in the eyes of the author)not make
the xx million American people who voted for him supremely unfit to vote? Startling hubris if you ask me.
Basically agree with the author;s position but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, stop calling elitists, elites. They are not "superior to
the rest in terms of ability or qualities" in fact, they are frequently inferior.
When Sen. Schumer announced, on MSNBC, that a president going against the CIA is 'stupid' because 'they have six ways from Sunday
of getting back at you,' doesn't that scream 'crisis' from the rooftops? Since when does America, allegedly a democratic republic,
assume elected presidents are the subordinates of the CIA? Well, de facto, probably for many years, but to actually openly approve
of it?
But there was no even discussion of his statement! It set off no alarm bells, no demands for reigning in the CIA ('the intelligence
"community"'). Why not? Presumably because the short-term interests of too many elites aligned in this case with that of the deep
state. The habit of 'whatever works for me, for the moment' won out, once again, further degrading the political culture right
at its institutional heart.
And also because Schumer is right. It isn't smart to criticize the CIA It wouldn't be good for your career, you know what
I mean? ('What are ya, a Russian commie or something?').
Merry is absolutely right. Removing Trump does nothing. It does less than nothing. It drives the disease even further into
the body politic. The only solution is honesty and courage. Can we muster it?
So tell me, if the down trodden Working class is so distraught by the elites putting them down, why do they celebrate when the
GOP House voted to take away their healthcare by removing rules on pre-existing conditions.
Say what you will about Obama and his
looking down on the people", but take him on his actions and he has done more to help the lower class through legislation and
executive orders than any other president in the past 30 years.
But wait, he didn't do anything about immigration. So therefore ignore all the laws, ignore the rules changed, just focus on
the revamped Know Nothings afraid of 3% of the population.
Principled opposition to President Trump's character is limited to this magazine and a tiny handful of like minded pundits and
politicians.
If Trump had run on Hillary Clinton's platform, and if he were ruling in accordance with that platform, waging a war for regime
change in Syria, signing TPP or some equivalent, refusing to enforce the immigration laws, granting amnesty to illegal immigrants,
and greatly increasing the number of legal immigrants, the Democrats and neocons would be praising him to the skies and supporting
him to the hilt.
If, on the other hand, someone other than Trump, Pat Buchanan for instance, had been elected on Trump's platform, the Democrats
and neocons would be attacking him with all the hysterical venom they are now hurling at Trump (remember the brief deranged hysteria
that followed Buchanan's 1996 primary win in New Hampshire?) – and I suspect some of those who pass for principled critics of
Trump's character would be caught up in this hypothetical anti-Buchanan hysteria, because of their sheer weak-willed yearning
for social acceptance.
If you want to really be serious about "fitness to lead", it has been a very long time since the USA has had a president who was
fit to lead.
The fact is, though, that the first rumblings of "impeachment" started before the Electoral College even met, back while Democrats
were still hoping to nullify what happened on election night through the Electoral College.
The whole Russian angle is simply a pretext. No one is saying that Russia hacked into the voting machines and added or subtracted
votes; at most they are accused of having done the kind of thing investigative journalists are praised for having done. When,
in the midst of the American election, British parliamentarians discussed banning Trump from the UK, **THAT** was much more serious
and overt tampering with our election, yet no one cares about that, because the UK is the land of Peter Pan and Mary Poppins,
whereas Russia is the bogeyman. Thus we see headlines about Russian jets "buzzing" the coast of Alaska, only to read further down
that by "buzzing" we mean they were 20+ miles into international airspace. Apparently it's an outrage that they should come within
a thousand miles of American airspace. American spy planes in the Black Sea are a different story: after all, they remained in
international air space the whole time!
It is dangerous to cast Russia unnecessarily in the role of villain, but it is even more dangerous to engineer even the softest
of coups. Once that is done, there is no going back. Very likely there would be widespread protests, many of them violent, and
a large portion of the public would see the de facto government as not merely corrupt and foolish, but completely invalid. The
"authorities" would probably be able to crush dissent, but only by going full-on Stalin. What happens after that, who knows, but
this story would not have any happy ending.
As usual, Merry's insights are useful and informed.However, Clinton, warts and all, would have more likely eased the pain of many
Americans. Her campaign focused too much on aggrieved minorities and not enough on the pain shared by all but her policies would
have more likely checked the manic redistribution of wealth from middle class to elite, ended the health care impasse that cruelly
toys with people, made education more accessible and enhanced investments in science and technology that could create jobs in
the coming years. With regard to immigration, it is true that adding so many immigrants to the population at a time when decent-paying
jobs were being eliminated through technology created a bad optic but the ban or removal of millions of immigrants would not really
restore middle class stability. Elites in both parties have made mistakes and been entirely too attentive to those who give the
most money but let's not legitimize Trump's mixture of exploiting anger with false promises and pushing policies that will make
the plight of working people even more desperate. Clinton might not have shaken up an elitist system she helped create but she
would not have shaken our democratic institutions and attacked an already fragile polity the way Trump has and will continue to
do for another 3 and half years. Like it or not, elites and disenfranchised will eventually have to work together and Trump has
set back this inevitable and urgent collaboration years, if not forever.
Nixon, Clinton, Wilson,Lincoln all won the popular vote. Why does this article suggest otherwise? The only presidents with a minority
of the popular vote are JQ Adams, Hayes, Harrison and Bush.
A self-described "publishing executive" who writes magazine/blog articles for a living is a member of the "elite"! Condemned
out of his own mouth. By his own vanity, perhaps.
And the case is hardly made by deliberately misstating facts.
65 million people voted for Hillary Clinton for President. Is that 65 million "elites," or 65 million "dupes" too stupid to
"see through her"? 65 million irresponsible citizens? Are these 65 million the real "deplorables"?
I don't expect to see any mea culpa statements from the numerous conservative writers and talking heads who made excuses
for Trump's selection as candidate prior to the election. Many of those excuses were promulgated through TAC. But a look in the
mirror, and a conversation with that "still, small voice" could be therapeutic for many of you.
Not Hillary Clinton, not the Democratic Party, not the 65 million "deplorables," were responsible for conservatives' decision
to go with a manifestly unsuitable candidate. Once again, those declaiming most loudly about "personal responsibility" - lack
it.
Good piece. Clearly the many leakers aren't concerned about national security consequences. This is only about bringing down Trump.
After all, the journalist establishment extolled Snowden for leaking tons of classified information. Trump might help himself
by being a little more "political," and learning to fight the right battles.
I hope your article gains a large readership that includes the nevertrump cadre. It is probably a pipe dream to hope they would
wake up and become aware of how they and their preference for Hillary look to many of the 63 million people who voted for Trump.
They knew he was inexperienced, coarse, and a mixed bag. They also know he's only been in office for 4 months and the obstruction,
malicious leaks, and malignant hatred of Trump began long before he took office.
Too many in the nevertrump cadre come off as self-righteous, smug Pharisees for whom conservatism has become a religion. For
some reason, they think their own character, knowledge, and judgement is impeccable with no room for correction by 63 million
voters. The vox populi needs the elites to override them. Such hubris. We are well aware that they would rather have had a Hillary
presidency. Are they any more mature than the Left in dealing with defeat? Apparently not.
Glenn Reynolds (professor of law) sums up the situation this way: "The childish response of Democrats - and 'NeverTrump' Republicans
- to the 2016 election has done more damage to American politics and institutions than any foreign meddling could do." It would
behoove the nevertrumpers to consider what they are sowing and reaping. Has their hatred of Trump and smug self-righteousness
made them deaf, dumb, and blind?
I think Victor Davis Hanson's article (see link below) has articulated the situation best and is best read as a whole instead
of excerpted. The National Review's readership fell greatly prior to the election because of the nevertrumpers pomposity, but
not the readership of VDH's articles at the NRO. Perhaps instead of silently disagreeing, the vox populi need to intervene and
impeach the nevertrumpers.
You elected a chump over all the obvious reasons not to, and he iS going to go before the end of the summer, either for the reasons
already in.front of us or for the new ones he will give us in.the next 60 days. Get your stupid saves out of the way now and allow
the republic to recover.
Btw the "you elected" phrase above is predicated on.the idea that the chump really won.the election, Cuz it's quite clear he
may not have.
The problem is not the elite, but a POTUS who is ignorant and arrogant,who is unqualified and inept and who is a man-child trying
to be a leader. He makes his own issues by opening his mouth and saying stupid things and insisting they are true, and doing stupid
things and insisting they are good. It is obvious he has no plan for anything and doesn't understand much of what is going on
around him. He never talks about anything of substance; on health care, Price had to deal with details, and with the tax plan,
it was Cohn who revealed that amazing one page initiative. When he does talk, he stupidly gives intel to our enemies. Trump is
an idiot with a pen and that is the problem and it is a problem for this country.
Excellent article. Can it be possible that the meritocratic oligarchy which runs this country still doesn't "get it?" Do they
really believe that getting rid of Trump solves the problem? Can it be possible that they still can't see that absent proof of
actual malfeasance, driving Trump out of office could make things even worse, as if things aren't bad already.
As the days and weeks go by it is becoming increasingly clear that the answer is–yes.
This is, far and away, the best summary of our current situation I have read anywhere. Outstanding!
One area around immigration could, however, be improved to truly capture why there is so much anger at the elites. On immigration,
the article states: "Leave aside for purposes of discussion the debate on the merits of the issue-whether mass immigration is
good for America or whether it reaches a point of economic diminishing returns and threatens to erode America's underlying culture.
Whatever the merits on either side of that debate, mass immigration, accepted and even fostered by the nation's elites, has driven
a powerful wedge through America. "
While true, this still misses the main point. The point is that the nation has existing laws to control immigration. Because
the elites could not change the law through the democratic process, they opted instead to just ignore the laws, with absolutely
no consequences except for those who live in the communities impacted.
In this context, the significance of the Clinton email scandal was magnified as it represented, again, the elites clearly violating
the law with no consequences.
The lawlessness aspect is a critical point that needs to be emphasized. The elite backlash is not just about policy disagreements,
its about a class of people (elites) violating/ignoring the law for their own benefit and at the expense of others. The very fact
that this could happen exposes how broken the system really is.
And btw.. Tho the author here is a smart and good writer, this whole "elites" thing is a stupid argument.I agree that we democrats
were too cowardly to nominate Bernie, whose whole message and absolute unlikelihood was most aligned with the spirit of the times.
As a party we thought small and thus became small. But Hillary was so vastly superior to any of the republican candidates that
the problem has nothing to do with right wing elites and everything to do with that large swath of the right wing which simply
is deplorable. They are deplorable and they deserve to know that the nation as a whole knows them to.be such. There wzz a time
when they knew their place– way down a hole with the boot of the nation s conscience firmly on.the top of their head. The right
let them emerge from.that hole during the advent of the tea party Cuz it liked the fact that those losers were giving their movement
breadth and energy.
But don't think for a minute that those millions of prejudiced, disgusting people have been redeemed by the chumps supposed
victory, they haven't. Maybe Hillary shouldn't have called them.such, idk, but the fact of their existence being a cancer in.the
republic is as correct today as it was 400 years ago and in.every generation.to.follow.
With the absolute control the elites have upon the military industrial complex, the traditional media outlets, the bureaucratic
"three-letter" departments of governance, as well as the powerful influence over both the judicial and legislative branches of
the governmnet, it seems impossible to me that such a group could be thrown off by its citizenry by violent uprising or otherwise.
Just watch some of the video of Chaffets lead intelligence committee trying to access information regarding the Clinton servers
and you will begin to see the incredible scope of the problem we face in America and the world today. Just as it was God that
delivered a rag-tag band of America patriots from the hands of elite-based tyranny at the founding of our country, it will take
an act of God to remove the chains and shackles of the Deep State from off the necks of the American people. Unfortunately a growing
number of Americans are turning their back on the only real chance of deliverance we have – He who delivered the Hebrews from
the Egyptian elites can delver us also.
In the day when we received our news of national and international goings on via newspapers, there was a space for reflection
and contemplation, and even some semblance of reasoned debate.
That ship has sailed, never to return and we are in the day of "Amusing Ourselves to Death"
It used to take some time and effort to form a proper mob.
What defines this shadowy type – "elite?" Educated? Financially well off? Aren't you an elite? Or does it only apply to liberals
and Democrats? How would you define yourself?
Apologies for a poorly written comment. The vox populi is a reference to a Douthat tweet: "7. But what, in the end, are elites
for? What justifies their existence? Some sort of wisdom that the vox populi can lack." Douthat's article, his tweet storm, and
the lack of strong repudiation from the nevertrump cadre pretty much ended my patience with all of them. It has become almost
impossible to tell the difference between the hysterical Left and the outraged nevertrump cadre. This last week has been such
a delightful display of how the media, establishment elites, and nevertrumpers feel about those 63 million unredeemable deplorable
Americans who voted for Trump. Thank you for allowing me to comment.
I agree with this. I voted for Trump and told my wife several times before voting, "I don't think Trump will be a good president.
I'm voting for him to send a "f- you" to the elites who run this country.
When I say elites, I don't mean only the high and mighty. In my hometown, where I have lived all my life, our city council
has handed millions of tax dollars to the region's largest car dealer to expand yet again. They pledged $1 million to lure a Hobby
Lobby even though it is in direct competition with a Michael's store that has been here for years. They bought property for $1
million, knocked down the building on it, prepared the site for development, then "sold" it to a developer for $10.
That kind of favoritism has been running wild in my little town - a little town controlled entirely by people who call themselves
Republicans.
"When a man as uncouth and reckless as Trump becomes president by running against the nation's elites, it's a strong signal that
the elites are the problem."
The problem is the industrialized disinformation machine that continues to spew hatred and lies. One side thinks it's the liberal
media, and the other side thinks it's RW talk radio and Fox News. It's easy to figure out which one is the real problem. There
are facts and there are internet rumors that are passed off as facts. Both can't be true. And even in the face of clear evidence,
primarily one side continues to believe the rumors and lies. Can't argue with delusion.
This article makes some good points. Trump was elected fair and square and the case against him is straight out of fantasy land.
BUT then there is the snotty rhetoric that Trump is "uncouth," the same sort of rhetoric employed by the elite New York Times.
Frankly I do not care about Trump's table manners. I do care that he has sought detente 2.0 with Russia and has killed off the
TPP, not only a lousy trade deal but also the economic limb of Hillary's military/economic assault (aka pivot) to China.
So I dismiss charges that Trump is "unfit" or "lacks nearly all the characteristics or attributes that a president should have.".
And I have little confidence in a writer who looks at things in such an arrogant way. That he is the new editor of The American
Conservative is enough to make me reconsider the contributions I make to this journal. Pat Buchanan and Bill Kauffman, yes. Merry?
I wonder.
I don't think the abundance of evidence that members of the Trump team met with Russian officials during the campaign can be called
"minor infractions against the president". These are certainly serious allegations. It was clear early in the Trump presidency
that he was not surrounding himself with people capable of carrying out the vision he articulated in his campaign for restoring
America's middle class. He made many picks from the ranks of the elites including his Vice President and Attorney General. His
selection seemed to favor loyalty rather than building a team that could make the changes he campaigned on. His Treasury pick
is straight from Wall Street and his foreign policy team is praised by the elites. Donald Trump is not the agent for change. You
can't differentiate him from the elites because he surrounded himself with them.
What the elites don't understand is that there are lot more of us than of them. If they try to take the election away from the
people who support President Trump. They will have a war on their hands and not a war of words.
Written by a Never-Trump, this article is absolute BS concerning the fact that President Trump is "unfit" for the office of the
presidency. The article is, however, absolutely correct about the elites who have thrown their middle finger in the face of WE
THE PEOPLE of the CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC of the USA, but WE THE PEOPLE elected President Trump to drain the swamp and he will.
The true enemy of the USA is the elected class in D.C. and their cronies like Buffet, Steyer, Gates and the Soros Democrat Marxist
Party and the utter traitorous actions by Obama. President Trump has to rid us of all Obamaites and has to slam the RINO traitors
to the ground. President Trump is perfectly fit to be president and certainly more so than some community organizer who hates
the USA and works to destroy her. Merry's hatred of President trump is boundless and shows him to be among the elites of the "media,"
a terrible curse on the USA. Thank God for President Trump and for FLOTUS Melanie Trump who has returned dignity, grace, class,
and beauty to the White House after eight years of hate-filled, resentful, nasty, and cloddish behavior by Michelle Obama who
disrespected the American people, spending millions of American posterity hard-earned money on herself and her family. Where was
your article about the corruption of Obama and his breaking of our laws and his utter and disgusting spitting on his oath to our
Constitution, Merry?
I am still confused how a billionaire was NOT considered 'elite' to the working class.. Does this not baffle anyone? OK, I get
that America on both sides, left and right, is sick of getting screwed over by the elites. But Trump is no friend to the working
man. He is only helping all his billionaire elite friends and creating practices that will hurt the working class who elected
him, whether via healthcare reform or promising coal miners they can have their jobs back, when everyone knows that sector is
dying. The rest of the world is getting ahead of us, in technology, infrastructure, renewable energy sources, etc. The divide
between conservatives and liberals has become so ridiculous that no one cares about making the US a better place. Trump's laughable
campaign slogan worked miracles in convincing voters, but I think everyone has sobered up to the dangers that Trump poses in so
many ways. We might be tired of politicians in Washington, but if most of us are honest, this 'shake-up' is going to do a lot
of damage. Maybe it's what we need in the long run to be able to change things, but all the laws and deregulation have only made
the elite stronger. It makes companies bigger, and the working man poorly treated and expendable.
Please help me understand. What remedies are you recommending? The reason I ask is because these accusations against a class of
people, the elites, rather than against specific wrongful acts smack of Mao and the Cultural Revolution to me. I sense that some
wish to see professors and newspaper editors working in fields with hand tools. I may have misread this posting, but Fran Macadam's
comments sound like a call for at least a sharp turn to me.
I'm not buying the "it's the elites" problem. An 'elite', more often than not, is someone who is using power in a way we don't
like, along with that person's clique. This is akin to using the term, 'activist judges'.
Ultimately, a democracy always gets the leaders it deserves. Once in a great while, it gets better leaders than it deserves.
There will always be facilitators of our worst instincts but ultimately, people have a choice. If a democracy is dysfunctional,
it's not because some 'elites' or 'deep state' have taken over everything. It's because the voters kept electing idiots and representatives
that didn't truly represent their interests.
Regarding the history of immigration in the United States, the Census Bureau says that the post-1850 peak was in 1890 when 14.8%
of residents were foreign born, followed closely by 1910 when 14.7% were foreign born.
Pew estimates that the US will break these records around 2025. Soon we'll have to go back to the mid-1700s to find a period
in American history with a level of immigration we will be experiencing in the near future.
-Vince Hill said: "What the elites don't understand is that there are lot more of us than of them. If they try to take the election
away from the people who support President Trump. They will have a war on their hands and not a war of words."
Those masses are not relevant to those "Elites" and are cannon fodder. The term "Deplorables" says it all. The masses are not
worthy of any consideration. Those "Deplorables" are an obstacle to be eliminated for the greater good. You don't need shadow
govt conspiracies to see this kind of stuff anymore. The blatant lies and manipulations from DC and the media originating from
Dems and Repubs is there for all to see. The 2016 election cycle was a wake-up call. Neither candidate was fit to be a President.
Both are crooked. Yet, the majority of sheep on both sides continue toward their slaughter. Trump may yet get us blown to bits,
but I no longer care about saving the status quo. The majority of people have spoken in this this country and we have been broken
for many Presidencies. The future of this nation, as is, is ugly, if one exists at all.
Mr. Trump is not the issue. And from what I have come to understand about Washington language from top to bottom, his language
isn't the issue either, in my view.
Whether he is unfit cannot even be addressed though I suspect he is, if one examines the long history of the office. I don't
have any doubt that Mr Trump is an effective admin as head of state. As a non-politician, there may be some issues. And his policy
and social positions may not square with my own. But that alone would not make him unfit. His temperament would not take unfit
either. But having to sift through the emotional tantrums of so many in leadership, influence and power to make that assessment
is a very tough slog.
Now we have a secret source that indicates a Mr. Trump did something or other in pressing for an end of needless investigations,
as any CEO might, if said investigations were hindering the effectiveness of his tenure. And clearly its a disruptive fire. The
seed of which were laid immediately as it became clear that Mr Trump, now Pres Trump was a contender. There was talk of impeachment
before the election, and while I appreciated the "heads up", it was disappointing that the agenda for the net four years was to
impeachment a man even before he took office.
I once said that Mr Trump was be given the royal "black treatment" and I stand by those comments. Everything he does, says,
is a minefield. There are no mines, but there are explosions from multiple corners. I have to say, even some of the authors on
TAC are are straining credulity, credibility with their "end of the world", "doom and gloom" commentary. The minefield, once again
has not evidence, but rather, so and so said thus. There's nothing documented that Pres Trump has done anything to hinder anything
about Russia or Gen Flynn. This type of scrutiny makes it impossible to do one's job.
I have been in communication for a long long time. And while my life is but a wreck at the moment. I have had some successes
in competitive speech, and coaching. When I did my master's degree, I was unfit for teaching as a grad assistant. Not because
of a lack of skill, knowledge or expertise, but because by every measure I had. What made the post a total disaster was the scrutiny
as if I I had never done anything of the kind. If you have been teaching a while, there are things you know that a grad just have
a clue about. My adviser attempted to fit my roundness into a nonexistent square peg. The entire graduate program was a disaster
and a disaster in every way. They simply had no clue how to manage someone who had long past graduate level knowledge or experience.
And much to failure, I did, wouldn't, couldn't communicate that fact, though given the internal politics of the place, I doubt
it would have mattered. The behaviors were at best dysfunctional at worst criminal. If I wasn't already highly suspicious, by
the time I left, I was certainly distrustful. I was asked if I wanted to pursue legal redress - the idea of that mess has always
been a route to be avoided, save for defense. "People are people, and sometimes they just do dumb stuff," was my attitude. I was
probably incorrect, dumb, innocent or malicious it was deeply beyond the pail.
Pres. Trump has entered an arena in which he has no respite from the attack or question of every aspect of his being and on
every matter. While, a Pres should expect scrutiny, what he has been subjected is over Everest unreasonable and reasoned. The
constant hyperbolic crisis mongering from people who supposedly have a better temperament, judiciousness, and higher moral code
is a tad bit "funny".
No. Humorous.
What is in play and of deep concern are the repeated manufactured crisis to disrupt his tenure Crisis mongering that began
shortly after 9/11 and has progressed with increasing speed, oddly enough when actual crisis have subsided. Aside form the economy,
the country faces no "real" threat beyond securing the border.
Given our rather carelessness action in the region of the middle east, we had better obey the security protocols prior to 9/11
any of which would have prevented the attack or severely diminished its success. Checking expired passports would have been helpful
– devastating to the attackers.
In Compton, Detroit, NYC, Tallahassee, Birmingham, there are hard working folks trying to figure out how they are going to
compete against the immigrant who's labor is cheaper, who doesn't contribute to the community as much as they draw. They are trying
to figure out how to be fair to their issues, without starving their own. They are doing everything possible to avoid being "deplorable"
and always have. And yet the representatives of their locals are about dealing with muckraking needlessly.
-----
"Sad!"
Boy. it's not a good sign when you are sad. Stay fiesty!
Those in opposition made it clear where they stood before the election. And Mr. Trump has just started to climb this long hill.
There's no reason for the war to turn violent, we are some distance from that turn and even the suggestion is hard to hear.
It suggests a state of threat that need not be aired. In many ways, this situation is airing out the problem, for those brave
enough to acknowledge it.
Though avoiding confrontation of any kind hasn't aided me much, I admit.
"... what astonished me was how quickly the media interpreted its use in the hearings to mean that the conversations and emails that apparently were recorded or intercepted involving Trump associates and assorted Russians as "sensitive contacts" meant that they were necessarily inappropriate, dangerous, or even illegal. ..."
"... The Post is unfortunately also providing ISIS with more information than it "needs to know" to make its story more dramatic, further compromising the source. ..."
"... McMaster described the report as "false" and informed the Post that "The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation. At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly." Tillerson commented that "the nature of specific threats were (sic) discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods, or military operations." ..."
"... The media will no doubt be seeking to magnify the potential damage done while the White House goes into damage control mode. ..."
"... In this case, the intelligence shared with Lavrov appears to be related to specific ISIS threats, which may include planned operations against civilian aircraft, judging from Trump's characteristically after-hours tweets defending his behavior, as well as other reporting. ..."
"... The New York Times , in its own reporting of the story, initially stated that the information on ISIS did not come from an NSA or CIA operation, and later reported that the source was Israel. ..."
"... And President Trump has one more thing to think about. No matter what damage comes out of the Lavrov discussion, he has a bigger problem. There are apparently multiple leakers on his National Security Council. ..."
"... You have McMaster himself who categorically denies any exposure of sources and methods – he was there in person and witness to the talks – and a cloud of unknown witnesses not present speculating, without reference to McMaster or Tillerson's testimony, about what might have happened. This is the American Media in a nutshell, the Infinite Circle Jerk. ..."
"... I am more disturbed how this story got into the press. While, not an ally, I think we should in cooperation with other states. Because the Pres is not familiar with the protocols and language and I doubt any executive has been upon entering office, I have no doubt he may be reacting or overreacting to the overreaction of others. ..."
"... Here's a word. We have no business engaging n the overthrow of another government that is no threat to the US or her allies, and that includes Israel. Syria is not. And we should cease and desist getting further entangled in the messes of the previous executive, his Sec of State and those organizations who seem to e playing with the life blood of the US by engaging if unnecessary risks. ..."
"... And if I understand the crumbs given the data provided by the Post, the Times and this article, if one had ill will for the source of said information, they have pretty good idea where to start. ..."
"... In general I agree with you, but the media was NEVER concerned about the treatment of sensitive material from HRC! ..."
"... I think he needs to cut back on intelligence sharing with Israel. They do just what the hell they want to do with anything. ..."
Intelligence agencies and senior government officials tend to use a lot of jargon. Laced with acronyms, this language sometimes does
not translate very well into journalese when it hits the media.
For example, I experienced a sense of disorientation two weeks ago over the word "sensitive" as used by several senators, Sally
Yates, and James Clapper during committee testimony into Russiagate. "Sensitive" has, of course, a number of meanings. But what
astonished me was how quickly the media
interpreted its use in the hearings to mean that the conversations and emails that apparently were recorded or intercepted involving
Trump associates and assorted Russians as "sensitive contacts" meant that they were necessarily inappropriate, dangerous, or even
illegal.
When Yates and Clapper were using "sensitive" thirteen times in the
86 page transcript of the Senate hearings, they were referring to the medium rather than the message. They were both acknowledging
that the sources of the information were intelligence related, sometimes referred to as "sensitive" by intelligence professionals
and government insiders as a shorthand way to describe that they are "need to know" material derived from either classified "methods"
or foreign-liaison partners. That does not mean that the information contained is either good or bad or even true or false, but merely
a way of expressing that the information must be protected because of where it came from or how it was developed, hence the "sensitivity."
The word also popped up this week in a Washington Post
exclusive report alleging that the president had, in his recent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, gone too
far while also suggesting that the source of a highly classified government program might be inferred from the context of what was
actually revealed. The Post describes how
The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so
sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump's decision
to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.
The Post is unfortunately also providing ISIS with more information than it "needs to know" to make its story more
dramatic, further compromising the source. Furthermore, it should be understood that the paper is extremely hostile to Trump,
the story is as always based on anonymous sources, and the revelation comes on top of another unverifiable Post article claiming
that the Russians might have sought to sneak
a recording device into the White House during the visit.
No one is denying that the president discussed ISIS in some detail with Lavrov, but National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, both of whom were present at the meeting,
have denied that any sources or methods were revealed while reviewing with the Russians available intelligence. McMaster
described the report as "false" and
informed the Post that "The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation.
At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known
publicly." Tillerson commented that "the nature of specific threats were (sic) discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods,
or military operations."
So the question becomes to what extent can an intelligence mechanism be identified from the information that it produces. That
is, to a certain extent, a judgment call. The president is able
on his own authority to declassify anything, so the legality of his sharing information with Russia cannot be challenged. What
is at question is the decision-making by an inexperienced president who may have been showing off to an important foreign visitor
by revealing details of intelligence that should have remained secret. The media will no doubt be seeking to magnify the potential
damage done while the White House goes into damage control mode.
The media is claiming that the specific discussion with Lavrov that is causing particular concern is related to a so-called
Special Access Program
, or SAP, sometimes referred to as "code word information." An SAP is an operation that generates intelligence that requires special
protection because of where or how it is produced. In this case, the intelligence shared with Lavrov appears to be related to
specific ISIS threats, which may include planned operations against civilian aircraft, judging from Trump's characteristically after-hours
tweets defending his behavior, as well as other reporting.
There have also been reports that the White House followed up on its Lavrov meeting with a routine review of what had taken place.
Several National Security Council members observed that some of the information shared with the Russians was far too sensitive to
disseminate within the U.S. intelligence community. This led to the placing of
urgent calls to NSA and CIA to brief them on what had been said.
Based on the recipients of the calls alone, one might surmise that the source of the information would appear to be either a foreign-intelligence
service or a technical collection operation, or even both combined. The Post claims that the originator of the intelligence
did not clear its sharing with the Russians and raises the possibility that no more information of that type will be provided at
all in light of the White House's apparent carelessness in its use. The New York Times , in its own reporting of the story,
initially
stated that the information on ISIS did not come from an NSA or CIA operation, and later reported that the source was Israel.
The Times is also reporting that Trump provided to Lavrov "granular" information on the city in Syria where the information
was collected that will possibly enable the Russians or ISIS to identify the actual source, with devastating consequences. That projection
may be overreach, but the fact is that the latest gaffe from the White House could well damage an important intelligence liaison
relationship in the Middle East while reinforcing the widely held impression that Washington does not know how to keep a secret.
It will also create the impression that Donald Trump, out of ignorance or hubris, exhibits a certain recklessness in his dealing
with classified information, a failing that he once attributed to his presidential opponent Hillary Clinton.
And President Trump has one more thing to think about. No matter what damage comes out of the Lavrov discussion, he has a
bigger problem. There are apparently multiple leakers on his National Security Council.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
This article has been updated to reflect news developments.
" The latest gaffe from the White House could well damage an important intelligence liaison relationship in the Middle East
"
On the other hand, it also represents closer collaboration with Russia–even if unintended–which is an improvement on the status
quo ante and, not to mention, key to ending the conflict in Syria.
You have McMaster himself who categorically denies any exposure of sources and methods – he was there in person and witness
to the talks – and a cloud of unknown witnesses not present speculating, without reference to McMaster or Tillerson's testimony,
about what might have happened. This is the American Media in a nutshell, the Infinite Circle Jerk.
Out of my depth, but was Trump working within the framework, maybe a bit outside if the story is true, of the Joint Implementation
Group the Obama administration created last year with Russia?
Also, I recall reading that the prior administration promised Russia ISIS intel. Not sure if that ever happened, but I doubt
they'd have made it public or leak anything to the press.
I think it should go without saying that intelligence is a sensitive business and protecting those who operate in its murky
waters is important to having an effective agency.
Of course the Pres of the US has a duty to do so.
I have not yet read the post article. But I am doubtful that the executive had any intention of putting anyone in harms way.
I am equally doubtful that this incident will. If the executive made an error in judgement, I am sure it will be dealt wit in
an appropriate manner.
I do wish he'd stop tweeting, though I get why its useful to him.
I am more disturbed how this story got into the press. While, not an ally, I think we should in cooperation with other
states. Because the Pres is not familiar with the protocols and language and I doubt any executive has been upon entering office,
I have no doubt he may be reacting or overreacting to the overreaction of others.
Here's a word. We have no business engaging n the overthrow of another government that is no threat to the US or her allies,
and that includes Israel. Syria is not. And we should cease and desist getting further entangled in the messes of the previous
executive, his Sec of State and those organizations who seem to e playing with the life blood of the US by engaging if unnecessary
risks.
Just another brier brushfire of a single tumble weed to add to the others in the hope that setting fires in trashcans will
make the current exec go away or at least engage in a mea culpa and sign more checks in the mess that is the middle east policy
objective that remains a dead end.
__________
And if I understand the crumbs given the data provided by the Post, the Times and this article, if one had ill will for
the source of said information, they have pretty good idea where to start.
Politics is now directly endangering innocent civilians. Because of the leaks and its publication, ISIS for sure now knows that
there is an information leak out of their organization. They will now re-compartmentalize and may be successful in breaking that
information leak. Innocent airline passenger civilians, American, Russian, or whoever may die as a result. Russia and the US are
both fighting ISIS. We are de facto allies in that fight whether some people like it or not. Time to get over it.
Having read the article, uhhh, excuse me, but unlike personal secrets. The purpose of intel is to use to or keep on hand for some-other
date. But of that information is related to the security of our interests and certainly a cooperative relationship with Russia
is in our interest. Because in the convoluted fight with ISIS/ISIL, Russia is an ally.
What this belies is the mess of the intelligence community. If in fact, the Russians intend to take a source who provided information
that was helpful to them, it would be a peculiar twist of strategic action. The response does tell us that we are in some manner
in league with ISIS/ISIL or their supporters so deep that there is a need to protect them, from what is anybody's guess. Because
if the information is accurate, I doubt the Russians are going to about killing the source, but rather improving their airline
security.
But if we are in fact attempting to remove Pres Assad, and are in league with ISIS/ISIL in doing so - I get why the advocates
of such nonsense might be in a huff. So ISIS/ISISL our one time foe and now our sometimes friend . . .
Good greif . . .
Pres Trump is the least of muy concerns when it coes to security.
Philip, back on July 23, 2014, you explained in "How ISIS Evades the CIA" "the inability of the United States government to anticipate
the ISIS offensive that has succeeded in taking control of a large part of Iraq." You explained why the CIA had to date had no
success in infiltrating ISIS.
You continued: "Given U.S. intelligence's probable limited physical access to any actual terrorist groups operating in Syria
or Iraq any direct attempt to penetrate the organization through placing a source inside would be difficult in the extreme. Such
efforts would most likely be dependent on the assistance of friendly intelligence services in Turkey or Jordan. Both Turkey and
Jordan have reported that terrorists have entered their countries by concealing themselves in the large numbers of refugees that
the conflict in Syria has produced, and both are concerned as they understand full well that groups like ISIS will be targeting
them next. Some of the infiltrating adherents to radical groups have certainly been identified and detained by the respective
intelligence services of those two countries, and undoubtedly efforts have been made to 'turn' some of those in custody to send
them back into Syria (and more recently Iraq) to report on what is taking place. Depending on what arrangements might have been
made to coordinate the operations, the 'take' might well be shared with the United States and other friendly governments."
You then describe the difficulties faced by a Turkish or Jordanian agent trying to infiltrate ISIS: "But seeding is very much
hit or miss, as someone who has been out of the loop of his organization might have difficulty working his way back in. He will
almost certainly be regarded with some suspicion by his peers and would be searched and watched after his return, meaning that
he could not take back with him any sophisticated communications devices no matter how cleverly they are concealed. This would
make communicating any information obtained back to one's case officers in Jordan or Turkey difficult or even impossible."
Notwithstanding how "difficult or even impossible" such an operation would be - and using the New York Times as your only source
for a lot of otherwise completely unsubstantiated information – and admitting that "this is sheer speculation on my part" – you
say that "it is logical to assume that the countries that have provided numerous recruits for ISIS [Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia]
would have used that fact as cover to carry out a seeding operation to introduce some of their own agents into the ISIS organization."
Back to the New York Times as your only source, you say that "the Times is also reporting that Trump provided to Lavrov 'granular'
information on the city in Syria where the information was collected that will possibly enable the Russians or ISIS to identify
the actual source, with devastating consequences."
But having ventured into the far reaches of that line of speculation, you do admit that "that projection may be overreach."
Indeed!
You go on to characterize the events of the White House meeting with the Russians as "the latest gaffe from the White House"
– even though there is absolutely no evidence (outside of the unsubstantiated reports of the Washington Post and the New York
Times) that anything to do with the meeting was a "gaffe" – and you further speculate that "it could well damage an important
intelligence liaison relationship in the Middle East."
That is, again, pure speculation on your part.
One valuable lesson that you've taught TAC readers over the years, Philip: That we need to carefully examine the sources of
information – and the sources of dis-information.
Yet again from Giraldi: the problem isn't that the POTUS is ignorant and incompetent; we should all be more concerned that the
Deep State is leaking the proof.
Trump has now essentially confirmed the story from the Post and contradicted the denials from McMaster – he shared specific intelligence
to demonstrate his willingness to work with the Russians. Moreover, it seems that Israel was the ally that provided this intelligence.
The author and others will defend this, but I can only see this as a reckless and impulsive decision that only causes Russia and
our allies to trust the US less.
So there's no wall, and Obama's amnesties look like they are here to
stay. Do you still trust Trump?
Uhhhh. I'm not very happy with
what has happened so far. I guess we have to try to push him to keep his
promises. But this isn't North Korea, and if he doesn't keep his promises
I'm out. This is why we voted for him. I think everyone who voted for him
knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues.
I hate to say it, but I agree with every line in my friend Frank Bruni's
op-ed in The New York Times
today. Where is the great negotiation? Where
is the bull in the china shop we wanted? That budget the Republicans pushed
through was like a practical joke Did we win anything? And this is the
great negotiator?
You said during the election and in columns that if there is no
wall it's the end of America.
Trump was our last shot. I kind of thought it was Romney, and then lo and
behold like a miracle Trump comes along. I still believe in Trump_vs_deep_state. I have
no regrets for ferociously supporting him. What choice did we have?
We had no choice. Yeah, I mean, my fingers are still crossed. It's not
like I'm out yet, but boy, things don't look good. I've said to other
people, "It's as if we're in Chicago and Trump tells us he's going to get us
to LA in six days. But for the first three days we are driving towards New
York. Yes, it is true he can still turn around and get us to LA in three
days, but I'm a little nervous.
The article , written by Farhad Manjoo, is titled "Can Facebook Fix Its Own Worst Bug?" and poses the question: "Mark Zuckerberg
now acknowledges the dangerous side of the social revolution he helped start. But is the most powerful tool for connection in human
history capable of adapting to the world it created?"
The article discusses the mood in Silicon Valley days before Donald Trump's inauguration, describing the general mood as "grim."
But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly quite positive about the future, describing 2016 as an "interesting year for
us [Facebook]."
The article later describes Silicon Valley's detachment from real world events, saying, "In Silicon Valley, current events tend
to fade into the background. The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war, the financial crisis and every recent presidential election occurred,
for the tech industry, on some parallel but distant timeline divorced from the everyday business of digitizing the world."
But the election of Donald Trump caused many in Silicon Valley to suddenly take notice of the political world, "Then Donald Trump
won. In the 17 years I've spent covering Silicon Valley, I've never seen anything shake the place like his victory," Manjoo writes.
"In the span of a few months, the Valley has been transformed from a politically disengaged company town into a center of anti-Trump
resistance and fear."
"A week after the election, one start-up founder sent me a private message on Twitter: 'I think it's worse than I thought,' he
wrote. 'Originally I thought 18 months. I've cut that in half,'" Manjoo recalls. "Until what? 'Apocalypse. End of the world.'"
The description of Silicon Valley as the "center of anti-Trump resistance" is unsurprising, Google employees and executives
previously held rallies at Google offices across the United States in protest of President Trump's temporary travel halt from
nations associated with terrorism.
"... Trump is another vassal/tool of the power elite. as all Presidents have been for decades. Some unhappily, but all completely. ..."
"... Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms. Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat Senators. ..."
"... He is thinning out the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. ..."
"... "EXPANDING" H2B visas ? The mere EXISTENCE of such a visa leaves me mindboggled. A visa to import landscapers, waiters & retail workers ?? In a country of over 320 million & a "real" unemployment rate over 8% ? Oh, give me a break -- ..."
"... Trump's plan was to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. Not to hit Congress for the money. If Trump doesn't get Mexico to pay it, he doesn't get his wall. Period. For the rest of the agenda other than the wall – I agree, but Trump was elected as the lesser evil of two. Not because his agenda is supported by a majority. ..."
"... The other 10% that gave Trump an electoral college victory voted because they wanted to keep Hillary away from the levers of power. Not because they care for Trump's agenda. ..."
"... Mission accomplished on dodging the danger of a Hillary presidency. Now Trump is evaluated on his own dangerousness and needs to be reigned in. ..."
"... Nobody here ever thought that. We fully expected the Trump presidency to be even more difficult than the campaign, not less. We are angry because Trump has reversed himself and sold out to the swamp. He is putting zero or negative effort into the core issues that got him elected. ..."
The Trumpocalypse is already building a wall in the minds of the
prospective immigrant.
Amid immigration setbacks, one Trump strategy seems to be working:
Fear
Most notably, Trump signed an executive order during his
first week in office that, among other things, vastly expanded the
pool of the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants who are deemed
priorities for deportation. [...] The most vivid evidence that Trump's
tactics have had an effect has come at the southern border with
Mexico, where the number of apprehensions made by Customs and Border
Patrol agents plummeted from more than 40,000 per month at the end of
2016 to just 12,193 in March, according to federal data.
Had a similar story, mutatis mutandis, been written by somone French in
France about French immigration, he or she would have been labeled
extreme right, or even fascist.
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning
out the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US
embassy in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles
airport. Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by
stepping on US soil. Making health care a matter for the states to
determine will erode Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford
to hand out free medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
"EXPANDING" H2B visas ? The mere EXISTENCE of such a visa leaves me
mindboggled. A visa to import landscapers, waiters & retail workers ?? In
a country of over 320 million & a "real" unemployment rate over 8% ? Oh,
give me a break --
H2B is a clear example that those researchers from Stanford (?) where
right: that the views/interests etc of 80-90% of Americans has exactly
ZERO influence over government/s policy.
Sounds exactly like all the previous "conservative" parties in US or UK
government over the past few decades, then. It's a double sided ratchet
process.
Trump's plan was to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it. Not to hit
Congress for the money. If Trump doesn't get Mexico to pay it, he doesn't
get his wall. Period.
For the rest of the agenda other than the wall –
I agree, but Trump was elected as the lesser evil of two. Not because
his agenda is supported by a majority. The 40% approval rating Trump
enjoys – that's how many support his agenda. It's not a majority.
The
other 10% that gave Trump an electoral college victory voted because they
wanted to keep Hillary away from the levers of power. Not because they
care for Trump's agenda.
Mission accomplished on dodging the danger of a
Hillary presidency. Now Trump is evaluated on his own dangerousness and
needs to be reigned in. His agenda is not particulary popular among
people that voted against Hillary, not for Trump. Support for it is soft,
and as Trump continues a divisive agenda push that creates too much
opposition – soft support withers away.
he is going to be the same in office as all previous Republican
administrations
. Worse: Hard to see how the following story can be
interpreted as anything up Trump-Kushner selling visas for personal
enrichment. This is FILLING the swamp with corrupt Chinese .
There's been all kinds of cucking from Trump. I knew it would happen
eventually, but never dreamed it would happen within the first 100 days.
His latest cuck is leaving DACA in place and agreeing to accept the
1250 Muslim refugees who Australia did not want after blustering that
Obama made a "stupid deal" and we would not take them. You can't take
anything Trump says to the bank as it could change tomorrow or next week
and he acts like it's nothing.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Please, someone come up with a better word than "cuck" for describing
cowardly or fake conservatives. (Or two words - one for cowards and one
for fakes.)
Where I live, in Montana, young white guys still work construction and
landscaping jobs. It's an amazing oasis, really.
What scares me is that
immigration decisions are being made by people who just
can't imagine
themselves or their family ever working these kinds of jobs or
anything close. They're out of touch. They have no right to capitulate
like this.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Sounds exactly like all the previous "conservative" parties in US or UK
government over the past few decades, then. It's a double sided ratchet
process.
@unit472
Anyone who thought Trump could wipe clean 50 years of accumulated
government grime in 100 days has excrement for brains. He's got
entrenched interests in D.C. that will not just give up their incomes and
influence. He's got a hostile media eager to bring the 'homeless' back to
front page status after they miraculously vanished during Obama's terms.
Sob stories without end. A Congress that is full of RINOs and 48 Democrat
Senators.
But progress is being made if you look. He is thinning out
the herd of visa issuing State Department apparatchiks. If the US embassy
in Yemen is closed there can be no Yemenis showing up in Dulles airport.
Cubans can no longer gain permanent residency in the US by stepping on US
soil. Making health care a matter for the states to determine will erode
Medicaid outlays as the states simply cannot afford to hand out free
medical care to their 'needy'.
It will take time to drain the swamp and it will be incremental but
with every judge he appoints to the Federal courts, with every Federal
bureaucrat retiring and with Republican Governors and legislatures doing
their thing it will start to dry up.
Trump evolved in the cut throat world of real estate and mega deals big
business over decades of time. It took dozens of years of deal making to
become powerful, wealthy, and President of the United States. He is in
this for the long game. He has to make deals with the worst sort of
political, military, and business psychopaths, to play the long game. He
has to trade the best outcomes for the people in exchange for not letting
the very worst outcomes prevail. His (and our) insane and ruthless
opponents still have great power and influence. Attacking them directly
in a frontal attack would be political suicide. Always the pretend
retreat then flank attack when the enemy loses cohesion and unity.
@ThreeCranes
A former psychology professor of mine who also worked as a counselor at a
crisis center told our class that he could tell the real suiciders from
the wannabes by whether, after the "bang" of the supposed gunshot to the
head, he could actually hear the phone dropping onto the floor. If he
didn't, then presumably the caller was clinging to some hope, which it
was his job to nurture.
Mr. Derbyshire, like you I chuckle whenever Pres. Trump's makes the PC
crowd clamor for a safe space. But if you are concerned with the
vilification and death of traditional America then snark doesn't cut it.
If you voted for Trump, then sorry, the joke' on you, bloke.
We probably both miss the Scranton PA or Binghamton NY of 1955, but
Trump or any pol is powerless to bring them back. The best we rubes stuck
in the heartland can hope for is that the transfer payments from the
costal elites keep coming, and that the dollar remains a reserve currency
so that the government can borrow to support us. As I see it, Trumps
policies , gutting healthcare, tax cuts for the investor class, will hurt
us "badwhites". That is a bad bargain for seing Rosie ODonnell cry, no
matter how sweet.
@Clark Westwood
Please, someone come up with a better word than "cuck" for describing
cowardly or fake conservatives. (Or two words -- one for cowards and one
for fakes.)
" How were these reptiles able to get their way on a major issue in the
Trump electoral agenda"
Very simple : Because they, the Democrats, own
and wield the "Racism" bludgeon, and there is nothing which terrifies a
meek, mild-mannered "Fair" Republican politico more than being labeled as
a :
RACIST
( not forgetting : " Enemy of women" , Homophobe, etc)
period.
And until these cowards learn to do their duty and persue that which
they were elected for, and ignore the tauntings of racism, and until they
begin to just throw it back, the racist label, at the crazy democrats,
they will be in the losers seat, period.
Authenticjazzman "Mensa" society member since 1973, airborne qualified
US Army vet, and pro jazz artist.
Nobody here thinks that, you sanctimonious jerk-store.
Nobody here ever thought that. We fully expected the Trump presidency to
be even more difficult than the campaign, not less. We are angry because
Trump has reversed himself and sold out to the swamp. He is putting zero
or negative effort into the core issues that got him elected.
Worry not! The vice grip has been tightened , and now it's welded. You
think a con man from New York will betray his cabal buddies for a down on
his luck, beer chugging, and his world possession of a lifted 4×4, when
he has resorts to build and secure his little Zionist grand children that
one day will inherit the earth .Keep dreaming!
@Joe Hide
Trump evolved in the cut throat world of real estate and mega deals big
business over decades of time. It took dozens of years of deal making to
become powerful, wealthy, and President of the United States. He is in
this for the long game. He has to make deals with the worst sort of
political, military, and business psychopaths, to play the long game. He
has to trade the best outcomes for the people in exchange for not letting
the very worst outcomes prevail. His (and our) insane and ruthless
opponents still have great power and influence. Attacking them directly
in a frontal attack would be political suicide. Always the pretend
retreat then flank attack when the enemy loses cohesion and unity.
In First 2 Months in Office – Trump
Reduces Debt by $100 Billion – Obama Increased Debt by $400 Billion –
Half a Trillion Dollar Difference!
The increased debt incurred under Obama equals approximately $76,000 for
every person in the United States who had a full-time job in December,
2016. That debt is far more debt than was accumulated by any previous
president. It equals nearly twice as much as the $4,889,100,310,609.44 in
additional debt that piled up during the eight years George W. Bush
served as president.
Trump's 100 Days a Success
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/28/making-america-great-again-donald-trumps-100-day-success/
Illegal Immigration Down by Unprecedented 73%
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/29/trump-illegal-immigration-down-by-unprecedented-73/
20 Ways Trump Unraveled the Administrative State
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/11/20-ways-trump-unraveled-administrative-state/
Bit by bit, Trump methodically undoing Obama policies
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-04-03-US--Trump-Undoing%20Obama/id-c4fa9fa659394514aa645a7cfd3c31ed
Illegal Entrance into U.S. Lowest in 17 Years, Mexicans Too Afraid of
Trump
https://www.prisonplanet.com/illegal-entrance-into-u-s-lowest-in-17-years-mexicans-too-afraid-of-trump.html
2010 Dems lost the House
The Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the federal and state
level during Obama's presidency, including 9 Senate seats, 62 House
seats, 12 governorships, and a startling 958 state legislative seats.
Congress is the problem – not the president. Congress is dysfunctional.
Getting reelected is everything to those people. First and foremost,
congress people represent themselves – not their voters. Taking campaign
money from lobbyists to stop challengers in jerrymandered districts and
blue or red states, is paramount.
The last time congress really accomplished something was in the
Clinton administration. Newt Gingrich did good things (balancing the
budget and changed welfare). Other than open ended war, Bush congresses
did nothing. Obama's congress got a disastrously bad healthcare bill
passed and nothing else.
For sixteen years, the Bush and Obama congresses just spent more and
more money driving up the debt.
Trump is going to show his colors, when in a couple of months – a new
long-term spending bill is coming up for a monumental vote.
Will Trump veto the trillion-dollar deficit that congress will send to
him or not?
In First 2 Months in Office – Trump
Reduces Debt by $100 Billion – Obama Increased Debt by $400 Billion –
Half a Trillion Dollar Difference!
The increased debt incurred under Obama equals approximately $76,000 for
every person in the United States who had a full-time job in December,
2016. That debt is far more debt than was accumulated by any previous
president. It equals nearly twice as much as the $4,889,100,310,609.44 in
additional debt that piled up during the eight years George W. Bush
served as president.
Trump's 100 Days a Success
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/28/making-america-great-again-donald-trumps-100-day-success/
Illegal Immigration Down by Unprecedented 73%
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/29/trump-illegal-immigration-down-by-unprecedented-73/
20 Ways Trump Unraveled the Administrative State
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/04/11/20-ways-trump-unraveled-administrative-state/
Bit by bit, Trump methodically undoing Obama policies
http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-04-03-US--Trump-Undoing%20Obama/id-c4fa9fa659394514aa645a7cfd3c31ed
Illegal Entrance into U.S. Lowest in 17 Years, Mexicans Too Afraid of
Trump
https://www.prisonplanet.com/illegal-entrance-into-u-s-lowest-in-17-years-mexicans-too-afraid-of-trump.html
2010 Dems lost the House
The Democrats lost more than 1,000 seats at the federal and state
level during Obama's presidency, including 9 Senate seats, 62 House
seats, 12 governorships, and a startling 958 state legislative seats.
"... Prescott Bush and the Smedley Butler " Business Plot " Bush's Grandfather Planned Fascist Coup In America Nazis, he has praised
Hitler, he talked last night in ... ..."
I wonder why this is never mentioned in history classes in the US.
And I wonder why the US media has not frankly discussed what
happened. Is it because it would embarrass powerful figures still on the scene today?
I wonder why there is no frank discussion of the Wall Street interests who helped to finance the fascists in Europe, including
the National Socialists in Germany, even during the 1940's?
When the going gets tough, the moneyed interests seem to invariably reach for fascism to maintain the status quo.
We keep too many things hidden 'for the sake of the system.' This obsession with secrecy is all too often the cover to hide misdeeds,
incompetency, abuses of the system, and outright crimes.
If some things cannot bear the light of day, the chances are pretty good that they can remain a festering sore and a moral hazard
for the future.
Here is a BBC documentary about what had happened.
Mirrored from TheRapeOfJustice (exceptional channel for large library of relevant historical broadcasts and documentaries)
http://www.youtube.com/user ...
Prescott
Bush and the Smedley Butler "Business Plot" Bush's Grandfather Planned Fascist
Coup In America Nazis, he has praised Hitler, he talked last night in ...
Billionaire businessman
Marc Cuban
insists
that the H-1B visa racket is a
feature of the vaunted American free market.
This is nonsense on stilts. It can't go
unchallenged.
Another
billionaire, our president, has
ordered
that the H-1B program be reformed.
This, too, is disappointing. You'll see why.
First, let's
correct Mr. Cuban: America has not a free
economy, but a mixed-economy. State and markets
are intertwined. Trade, including trade in
labor, is not free; it's regulated to the hilt.
If anything, the labyrinth of work visas is an
example of a fascistic government-business
cartel in operation.
The H-1B
permit, in particular, is part of that
state-sponsored visa system. The primary H-1B
hogs-Infosys (and another eight, sister Indian
firms), Microsoft, and Intel-import labor with
what are grants of government privilege. Duly,
the corporations that hog H-1Bs act like
incorrigibly corrupt rent seekers. Not only do
they get to replace the American worker, but
they get to do so at his expense.
Here's how:
Globally, a
series of sordid liaisons ensures that American
workers are left high and dry. Through the
programs of the International Trade
Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the
Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the
International Monetary Fund, and other
oink-operations, the taxpaying American worker
is forced to subsidize and underwrite the
investment risks of the very corporations that
have given him the boot.
Domestically,
the fascistic partnership with the State amounts
to a subsidy to business at the expense of the
taxpayer. See, corporations in our democratic
welfare state externalize their employment costs
onto the taxpayers.
So while
public property is property funded by taxpayers
through expropriated taxes; belongs to
taxpayers; is to be managed for their benefit-at
least one million additional immigrants a year,
including recipients of the H-1B visa, are
allowed the free use of taxpayer-supported
infrastructure and amenities. Every new arrival
avails himself of public works such as roads,
hospitals, parks, libraries, schools, and
welfare.
Does this
epitomize the classical liberal idea of
laissez faire
?
Moreover,
chain migration or family unification means
every H-1B visa recruit is a ticket for an
entire tribe. The initial entrant-the meal
ticket-will pay his way. The honor system not
being an especially strong value in the Third
World, the rest of the clan will be America's
problem. More often than not, chain-migration
entrants become wards of the American taxpayer.
Spreading like
gravy over a tablecloth, this rapid, inorganic
population growth is detrimental to all
ecosystems: natural, social and political.
Take Seattle
and its surrounding counties. Between April 2015
and 2016, the area was inundated with "86,320
new residents, marking it the region's biggest
population gains this century. Fueled in large
part by the technology industry, an average of
236 people is moving to the Seattle area each
day,"
reported
Geekwire.com. (Reporters for our
local fish-wrapper-in my case, parrot-cage
liner-have discharged their journalistic duties
by inviting readers to "share" their traffic-jam
stories.)
Never as dumb
as the local reporters, the likes of Bill Gates,
Steve Ballmer, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Cuban
are certainly as detached.
Barricaded in
their obscenely lavish compounds-from the
comfort of their monster mansions-these social
engineers don't experience the "environmental
impacts of rapid urban expansion"; the
destruction of verdant open spaces and farmland;
the decrease in the quality of the water we
drink and air we breathe, the increase in
traffic and traffic accidents, air pollution,
the cellblock-like housing erected to
accommodate their imported I.T. workers and
extended families, the delicate bouquet of amped
up waste management and associated seepages.
For locals,
this lamentable state means an inability to
afford homes in a market in which property
prices have been artificially inflated. Young
couples lineup to view tiny apartments. They
dream of that picket fence no more. (And our
"stupid leaders," to quote the president before
he joined leadership, wonder why birthrates are
so low!)
In a true free
market, absent the protectionist state,
corporate employers would be accountable to the
community, and would be wary of the strife and
lowered productivity brought about by a
multiethnic and multi-linguistic workforce. All
the more so when a foreign workforce moves into
residential areas almost overnight as has
happened in Seattle and its surrounds.
Alas, since
the
high-tech traitors
can externalize their
employment costs on to the community; because
corporations are subsidized at every turn by
their victims-they need not bring in the best.
Cuban thinks
they do. High tech needs to be able to "search
the world for the best applicants," he
burbled
to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Yet more crap.
Why doesn't
the president know that the H-1B visa category
is not a special visa for highly skilled
individuals, but goes mostly to average workers?
"Indian business-process outsourcing companies,
which predominantly provide technology support
to corporate back offices," by
the Economist's accounting.
Overall, the
work done by the H1-B intake does not require
independent judgment, critical reasoning or
higher-order thinking. "Average workers;
ordinary talent doing ordinary work," attest the
experts who've been studying this intake for
years. The master's degree is the exception
within the H1-B visa category.
More
significant: THERE IS a visa category that is
reserved exclusively for individuals with
extraordinary abilities and achievement. I know,
because the principal sponsor in our family
received this visa. I first
wrote
about the visa that doesn't displace
ordinary Americans
in 2008
:
It's the O-1
visa.
"Extraordinary
ability in the fields of science, education,
business or athletics,"
states
the Department of Homeland Security,
"means a level of expertise indicating that the
person is one of the small percentage who has
risen to the very top of the field of endeavor."
Most
significant:
There is no cap on the number
of O-1 visa entrants allowed. Access to this
limited pool of talent is unlimited.
My point
vis-à-vis the O-1 visa is this: The H-1B hogs
are forever claiming that they are desperate for
talent. In reality, they have unlimited access
to individuals with unique abilities through the
open-ended O-1 visa program.
There is no
limit to the number of geniuses American
companies can import.
Theoretically,
the H-1B program could be completely abolished
and all needed Einsteins imported through the
O-1 program. (Why, even future first ladies
would stand a chance under the business category
of the O-1A visa, as a wealth-generating
supermodel could certainly qualify.)
Now you
understand my disappointment. In his
April 18 Executive Order,
President Trump
promised to merely reform a program that needs
abolishing. That is if "Hire American" means
anything to anybody anymore.
This four seasons theory looks to me like some king of amateur dialectics...
80 years is close to Kondratiev cycles length.
Notable quotes:
"... Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues that the United States is nearing a crisis that could be just as disruptive and catastrophic as the most seminal global turning points of the last 250 years. ..."
"... This prophecy, which is laid out in a 1997 book, "The Fourth Turning," by two amateur historians, makes the case that world events unfold in predictable cycles of roughly 80 years each that can be divided into four chapters, or turnings: growth, maturation, entropy and destruction. Western societies have experienced the same patterns for centuries, the book argues, and they are as natural and necessary as spring, summer, fall and winter. ..."
"... In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, "Everything President Trump is doing - all of it - is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis." But the magnitude of this crisis - and who is ultimately responsible for it - is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage. This helps explain Mr. Trump's tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border control. ..."
"... We should shed and simplify the federal government in advance of the Crisis by cutting back sharply on its size and scope but without imperiling its core infrastructure. ..."
"... One of the authors' major arguments is that Western society - particularly American culture - has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and self-serving belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment - and bad leaders that drive societies into decline. ..."
"... The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump's "with us or against us" attitude raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis - and what kind of loyalty his administration might demand. ..."
Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues
that the United States is nearing a crisis that could be just as disruptive and catastrophic as the
most seminal global turning points of the last 250 years.
This prophecy, which is laid out in a 1997 book, "The Fourth Turning," by two amateur historians,
makes the case that world events unfold in predictable cycles of roughly 80 years each that can be
divided into four chapters, or turnings: growth, maturation, entropy and destruction. Western societies
have experienced the same patterns for centuries, the book argues, and they are as natural and necessary
as spring, summer, fall and winter.
Few books have been as central to the worldview of Mr. Bannon, a voracious reader who tends to
see politics and policy in terms of their place in the broader arc of history.
But what does the book tell us about how Mr. Bannon is approaching his job as President Trump's
chief strategist and what he sees in the country's future? Here are some excerpts from the book,
with explanations from The New York Times.
'Winter Is Coming,' and We'd Better Be Prepared
History is seasonal, and winter is coming. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake.
Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, one commensurate
with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World
War II. The risk of catastrophe will be high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil
violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule.
The "Fourth Turning" authors, William Strauss and Neil Howe, started using that phrase before
it became a pop culture buzzword courtesy of HBO's "Game of Thrones." But, as the authors point out,
some winters are mild. And sometimes they arrive late. The best thing to do, they say, is to prepare
for what they wrote will be "America's next rendezvous with destiny."
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, "Everything President Trump is doing - all of
it - is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis." But the magnitude of this crisis - and who
is ultimately responsible for it - is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage.
This helps explain Mr. Trump's tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border
control.
The 'Deconstruction of the Administrative State,' and Much More, Is Inevitable
The Fourth Turning will trigger a political upheaval beyond anything Americans could today imagine.
New civic authority will have to take root, quickly and firmly - which won't be easy if the discredited
rules and rituals of the old regime remain fully in place. We should shed and simplify the federal
government in advance of the Crisis by cutting back sharply on its size and scope but without imperiling
its core infrastructure.
The rhythmic, seasonal nature of history that the authors identify foresees an inevitable period
of decay and destruction that will tear down existing social and political institutions. Mr. Bannon
has famously argued that the overreaching and ineffective federal government - "the administrative
state," as he calls it - needs to be dismantled. And Mr. Trump, he said, has just begun the process.
As Mr. Howe said in an interview with The Times: "There has to be a period in which we tear down
everything that is no longer functional. And if we don't do that, it's hard to ever renew anything.
Forests need fires, and rivers need floods. These happen for a reason."
'The American Dream Is Dead'
James Truslow Adams (wrote) of an 'American Dream' to refer to this civic faith in linear advancement.
Time, they suggested, was the natural ally of each successive generation. Thus arose the dogma of
an American exceptionalism, the belief that this nation and its people had somehow broken loose from
any risk of cyclical regress . Yet the great weakness of linear time is that it obliterates time's
recurrence and thus cuts people off from the eternal - whether in nature, in each other, or in ourselves.
One of the authors' major arguments is that Western society - particularly American culture -
has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and self-serving
belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss
over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment - and bad leaders that drive societies
into decline.
Though he probably did not intentionally invoke Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, Mr. Trump was channeling
their thesis when he often said during his campaign, "The American dream is dead." One of the scenarios
the book puts forward is one in which leaders who emerge during a crisis can revive and rebuild dead
institutions. Mr. Trump clearly saw himself as one of these when he said his goal would be to bring
back the American dream.
Conform, or Else
In a Fourth Turning, the nation's core will matter more than its diversity. Team, brand, and standard
will be new catchwords. Anyone and anything not describable in those terms could be shunted aside
- or worse. Do not isolate yourself from community affairs . If you don't want to be misjudged,
don't act in a way that might provoke Crisis-era authority to deem you guilty. If you belong to a
racial or ethnic minority, brace for a nativist backlash from an assertive (and possibly authoritarian)
majority.
The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome
of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or
refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump's "with us or against us" attitude
raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis - and what kind of loyalty
his administration might demand.
"Okay, step back and
absorb this one. Mr. Prasad is saying that millions of manufacturing workers in the Midwest lost
their jobs and saw their communities decimated because the Bush administration wanted to press China
to enforce Pfizer's patents on drugs, Microsoft's copyrights on Windows, and to secure better access
to China's financial markets for Goldman Sachs.
This is not a new story, in fact I say it all the time. But it's nice to have the story confirmed
by the person who occupied the International Monetary Fund's China desk at the time.
Porter then jumps in and gets his story completely 100 percent wrong:
"At the end of the day, economists argued at the time, Chinese exchange rate policies didn't cost
the United States much. After all, in 2007 the United States was operating at full employment. The
trade deficit was because of Americans' dismal savings rate and supercharged consumption, not a cheap
renminbi. After all, if Americans wanted to consume more than they created, they had to get it somewhere."
Sorry, this was the time when even very calm sensible people like Federal Reserve Board Chair
Ben Bernanke were talking about a "savings glut." The U.S. and the world had too much savings, which
lead to a serious problem of unemployment. Oh, we did eventually find a way to deal with excess savings.
Anyone remember the housing bubble?"
I don't remember Krugman or PGL saying China or trade policy was a problem at the time. They'd
just argue the Fed needs to lower rates to compensate.
Trump Isn't Wrong on China Currency Manipulation, Just Late
by Eduardo Porter
ECONOMIC SCENE APRIL 11, 2017
Has the United States mismanaged the ascent of China?
By April 15, the Treasury Department is required to present to Congress a report on the
exchange rate policies of the country's major trading partners, intended to identify manipulators
that cheapen their currency to make their exports more attractive and gain market share in
the United States, a designation that could eventually lead to retaliation.
It would be hard, these days, to find an economist who feels China fits the bill. Under
a trade law passed in 2015, a country must meet three criteria: It would have to have a "material"
trade surplus with the rest of the world, have a "significant" surplus with the United States,
and intervene persistently in foreign exchange markets to push its currency in one direction.
While China's surplus with the United States is pretty big - almost $350 billion - its global
surplus is modest, at 2.4 percent of its gross domestic product last year. Most significant,
it has been pushing its currency up, not down. Since the middle of 2014 it has sold over $1
trillion from its reserves to prop up the renminbi, under pressure from capital flight by Chinese
companies and savers.
Even President Trump - who as a candidate promised to label China a currency manipulator
on Day 1 and put a 45 percent tariff on imports of Chinese goods - seems to be backing away
from broad, immediate retaliation.
And yet the temptation remains. "When you talk about currency manipulation, when you talk
about devaluations," the Chinese "are world champions," Mr. Trump told The Financial Times,
ahead of the state visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to the United States last week.
For all Mr. Trump's random impulsiveness and bluster - and despite his lack of a coherent
strategy to engage with what is likely soon to become the world's biggest economy - he is not
entirely alone with his views.
Many learned economists and policy experts ruefully acknowledge that the president's intuition
is broadly right: While labeling China a currency manipulator now would look ridiculous, the
United States should have done it a long time ago.
"With the benefit of hindsight, China should have been named," said Brad Setser, an expert
on international economics and finance who worked in the Obama administration and is now at
the Council on Foreign Relations.
There were reasonable arguments against putting China on the spot and starting a process
that could eventually lead to American retaliation.
Yet by not pushing back against China's currency manipulation, and allowing China to deploy
an arsenal of trade tactics of dubious legality to increase exports to the United States, successive
administrations - Republican and Democratic - arguably contributed to the economic dislocations
that pummeled so many American workers over more than a decade. Those dislocations helped propel
Mr. Trump to power.
From 2000 to 2014 China definitely suppressed the rise of the renminbi to maintain a competitive
advantage for its exports, buying dollars hand over fist and adding $4 trillion to its foreign
reserves over the period. Until 2005, the Chinese government kept the renminbi pegged to the
dollar, following it down as the greenback slid against other major currencies starting in
2003.
American multinationals were flocking into China, taking advantage of its entry into the
World Trade Organization in December 2001, which guaranteed access to the American and other
world markets for its exports. By 2007, China's broad trade surplus hit 10 percent of its gross
domestic product - an unheard-of imbalance for an economy this large. And its surplus with
the United States amounted to a full third of the American deficit with the world.
Though the requirement that the Treasury identify currency manipulators "gaining unfair
competitive advantage in international trade" dates back to the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness
Act of 1988, China was never called out.
There were good reasons. Or at least they seemed so at the time. For one, China hands in
the administration of George W. Bush argued that putting China on the spot would make negotiations
more difficult, because even Chinese leaders who understood the need to allow their currency
to rise could not be seen to bow to American pressure.
Labeling China a manipulator could have severely hindered progress in other areas of a complex
bilateral economic relationship. And the United States had bigger fish to fry.
"There were other dimensions of China's economic policies that were seen as more important
to U.S. economic and business interests," Eswar Prasad, who headed the China desk at the International
Monetary Fund and is now a professor at Cornell, told me. These included "greater market access,
better intellectual property rights protection, easier access to investment opportunities,
etc."
At the end of the day, economists argued at the time, Chinese exchange rate policies didn't
cost the United States much. After all, in 2007 the United States was operating at full employment.
The trade deficit was because of Americans' dismal savings rate and supercharged consumption,
not a cheap renminbi. After all, if Americans wanted to consume more than they created, they
had to get it somewhere.
And the United States had a stake in China's rise. A crucial strategic goal of American
foreign policy since Mao's death had been how to peacefully incorporate China into the existing
order of free-market economies, bound by international law into the fabric of the postwar multilateral
institutions.
And the strategy even worked - a little bit. China did allow its currency to rise a little
from 2005 to 2008. And when the financial crisis hit, it took the foot off the export pedal
and deployed a giant fiscal stimulus, which bolstered internal demand.
Yet though these arguments may all be true, they omitted an important consideration: The
overhaul of the world economy imposed by China's global rise also created losers.
In a set of influential papers that have come to inform the thinking about the United States'
relations with China, David Autor, Daron Acemoglu and Brendan Price from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; Gordon Hanson from the University of California, San Diego; and David
Dorn from the University of Zurich concluded that lots of American workers, in many communities,
suffered a blow from which they never recovered.
Rising Chinese imports from 1999 to 2011 cost up to 2.4 million American jobs, one paper
estimated. Another found that sagging wages in local labor markets exposed to Chinese competition
reduced earnings by $213 per adult per year.
Economic theory posited that a developed country like the United States would adjust to
import competition by moving workers into more advanced industries that competed successfully
in global markets. In the real world of American workers exposed to the rush of imports after
China erupted onto world markets, the adjustment didn't happen.
If mediocre job prospects and low wages didn't stop American families from consuming, it
was because the American financial system was flush with Chinese cash and willing to lend,
financing their homes and refinancing them to buy the furniture. But that equilibrium didn't
end well either, did it?
What it left was a lot of betrayed anger floating around among many Americans on the wrong
end of these dynamics. "By not following the law, the administration sent a political signal
that the U.S. wouldn't stand up to Chinese cheating," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations. "As we can see now, that hurt in terms of maintaining political
support for open trade."
If there was a winner from this dynamic, it was Mr. Trump.
Will Mr. Trump really go after China? In addition to an expected executive order to retaliate
against the dumping of Chinese steel, he has promised more. He could tinker with the definitions
of "material" and "significant" trade surpluses to justify a manipulation charge.
And yet a charge of manipulation would add irony upon irony. "It would be incredibly ironic
not to have named China a manipulator when it was manipulating, and name it when it is not,"
Mr. Setser told me. And Mr. Trump would be retaliating against the economic dynamic that handed
him the presidency.
"What it left was a lot of betrayed
anger floating around among many Americans on the wrong end of these dynamics. "By not following
the law, the administration sent a political signal that the U.S. wouldn't stand up to Chinese
cheating," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "As we can
see now, that hurt in terms of maintaining political support for open trade."
If there was
a winner from this dynamic, it was Mr. Trump."
So PGL the Facile and Krugman - the New Democrats - helped elect with their corporate free
trade.
In the days since Trump brought the U.S. deeper into that country's six-year-old civil war,
his most fervent right-wing supporters have lashed out online, with many saying they feel
betrayed.
Watch "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt," providing reports and analysis of the day's most
newsworthy national and international events.
John
58 seconds ago
It's true. Trump has broken his campaign promises, and stabbed his supporters in the back.
He has done exactly what I expected Hillary and Jeb to do ... left Obamacare in place and
launched a sneak attack on Syria.
What's the point of voting in 2018?
wolf pfizer
1 minute ago
It's inter-religion war. Shiait Asad and sunni Rebels. We don't need to get involved
except for providing humanitarian assistance. There is a false narrative that is
being propagated here in the US about Rebels that somehow they are for democracy.
Don't be in any illusion that these Rebels are fighting for democracy. Average Syrian
enjoyed more personal freedom under Asad Regime compared to other Arab countries in
that part of the world. About the Chemical attack, the Rebels are vicious enough to
carry out such attack and pin it on Asad. Let neighboring countries take care of the
situation. We should stay out and concentrate on our homeland. We enough problems of
our own here.
Cory
3 minutes ago
As Americans we NEVER like to admit when we get something wrong. We always try to
justify things by blaming someone else. The Dems blame the GoP. The GoP blame the
Dems. It's always something. The older generation likes to blame the younger and
vice- versa. The real fact is everything that is right or wrong in this country is
the result of all of us. The past 50 years BOTH parties have had ample opportunity to
make changes and neither party has done anything to make changes. Any policy Trump
makes now someone else will change down the road, much like Trump has done to Obama.
Welcome to the new age of instability.
notinmymane
6 minutes ago
You Trumpanzees got conned by a snake-oil salesman. Didn't you know that he was a conman
before you voted for him? Stuuuuupid!
The Hated Stooge
6 minutes ago
And The Trump Vaudeville Act circle's the globe with Creepy Kushner leading the way.
Kushner will fix everything.
scrub
11 minutes ago
For every Trump supporter who is upset with his decision to bomb Syria there are a dozen or
more who still stand behind him and that decision. Why won't you do an article on that,
Yahoo? Have you informed all the readers, pro and anti-Trump alike, that Obama managed to
bomb at least one Middle East country every day that he was in office (8 fecking years, and
that was over oil, not inhumane treatment of people)? Where's the outrage over that?
Gertwise
12 minutes ago
This is exactly what they voted for. They were warned, pleaded with, shown facts, and they
still voted him into office. You reap what you sow.
Alex Verne
12 minutes ago
He does not need us anymore, ho ha new friends now. Neocons, Zionists even Clinton.
The SWAMP loves him now, he IS the SWAMP now.
Edward
20 minutes ago
They also think Bannon is still relevant.
Missile strike demonstrates American leadership. Always bipartisan support for that. Death chemical warfare agents unacceptable so must do something. Didn't I read a Syrian quoted the other day "I buried my family today. If they had been killed by barrel bombs I could have given Assad a pass but death by chemical weapons is unacceptable."? Did I not read that? That aside, clearly there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to kill civilians. Assad crossed that line and we had to do something.
PS Real men don't consult Congress before ordering missile strikes on sovereign nations. It'd be un-American to question the wisdom of bombing a butcher like Assad. What downside could there be?
Incompetent hawks are
awful. We can at least
take some comfort that
Schumer and Pelosi
called out Trump for
acting recklessly...
Oh, wait, that was in
an alternate reality
where they did that.
@#$%.
If it weren't for
incompetence and
belligerence we would
have any foreign
policy at all.
"... you like most losers are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and it worked perfectly for him. He got elected. ..."
"... now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much. ..."
"... torture, Guantanamo and stealing their oil ..."
This turn of events is the biggest challenge ever to my support of Trump. If he really goes
the way he is indicating, he will lose the support of people like me -- and there may be millions
like me. We have no alternative candidate, but we will never again be led down this road.
If Trump turns, that is the end of everything.
" we will never again be led down this road." You will, you will because you like most losers
are driven by your own projections. You projected your hopes and wishful thinking on Trump and
it worked perfectly for him. He got elected.
But now after firing Bannon there is nothing left. He was the last and the only guarantor of
your hopes. That's why MSM hated Bannon so much.
The only pre-election promises that actually will be retained are torture, Guantanamo and stealing
their oil. Did you vote for these items? Anyway, that is all you are left with. Get used to it:
"... "Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last administration. I was put on to ensure that it was de-operationalized," Bannon said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal. ..."
"... "General McMaster has returned the NSC to its proper function," he added. ..."
President Donald Trump has reorganized the National Security Council,
and his Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon is apparently no longer on the
Principals Committee, according to a memo that has surfaced.
Bloomberg has posted a
memo
from Trump, dated April 4, reorganizing the National Security
Council and updating the list of officials who sit on its Principals
Committee. The document shows no role for Bannon and a reduced role
for Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert.
Director of National
Intelligence Dan Coats and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Marine General Joseph Dunford, are again considered
"regular
attendees"
of the principals committee.
In addition to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the regular
attendees will be the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Energy,
Homeland Security and the Attorney General; the national and homeland
security advisers; and the US envoy to the UN, as well as the CIA
director, in addition to the Joint Chiefs chair and the DNI.
The White House chief of staff, counsel and deputy counsel for
national security, and the director of the Office of Management and
Budget are also invited to attend any NSC meeting, the memo says.
"Susan Rice operationalized the NSC during the last
administration. I was put on to ensure that it was de-operationalized,"
Bannon said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.
"General McMaster has returned the NSC to its proper function,"
he added.
International Trade Lessons for the New York Times
The New York Times told readers * that Mexico is preparing to "play the corn card" in its negotiations
with Donald Trump. The piece warns:
"Now corn has taken on a new role - as a powerful lever for Mexican officials in the run-up
to talks over Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"The reason: Much of the corn that Mexico consumes comes from the United States, making it
America's top agricultural export to its southern neighbor. And even though President Trump appears
to be pulling back from his vows to completely overhaul Nafta, Mexico has taken his threats to
heart and has begun flexing its own muscle.
"The Mexican government is exploring buying its corn elsewhere - including Argentina or Brazil
- as well as increasing domestic production. In a fit of political pique, a Mexican senator even
submitted a bill to eliminate corn purchases from the United States within three years."
It then warns of the potential devastation from this threat:
"The prospect that the United States could lose its largest foreign market for corn and other
key products has shaken farming communities throughout the American Midwest, where corn production
is a vital part of the economy. The threat is particularly unsettling for many residents of the
Corn Belt because much of the region voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump in the presidential election.
" 'If we lose Mexico as a customer, it will be absolutely devastating to the ag economy,' said
Philip Gordon, 68, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat on a farm in Saline, Mich., that has been
in his family for 140 years."
Okay, I hate to spoil a good scare story with a dose of reality, but let's think this one through
for a moment. According to the piece, instead of buying corn from the United States, Mexico might
buy it from Argentina or Brazil. So, we'll lose our Mexican market to these two countries.
But who is buying corn from Argentina and Brazil now? If this corn had previously been going
to other countries, then presumably these other countries will be looking to buy corn from someone
else, like perhaps U.S. farmers?
It is of course possible that Argentina and Brazil will switch production away from other crops
to corn to meet Mexico's demand, but that would likely leave openings in these other crops for
U.S. farmers. The transition to new markets for corn crops or a switch from corn to the crops
vacated by Brazil and Argentina would not be costless, but it also may not imply the sort of devastation
promised by the New York Times.
See, market economies are flexible. This is something that economists know, as should reporters
who write on economic issues. This may undermine scare stories that are being told to push an
agenda, but life is tough.
Not mentioned is that Mexico is the home of corn, that thousands of farmers who used to make their
livings raising native corns lost their farms to market rate competition from the USA under NAFTA.
"I do think there is a crisis, on many fronts," Drudge admitted.
"Is some of it of his own making?" he asked before going to calls.
The DrudgeReport.com founder indeed invoked his former radio host days when he joined Savage in California to celebrate the
veteran broadcaster's 75th birthday.
"We're trying to save this young Trump administration," Drudge declared.
Drudge claimed Trump single-handedly saved floundering leftist media outlets like the New York Times and Vanity Fair, which
seemed destined to fail before the "opposition" party "consolidated."
"I'm getting a little bit nervous about the media situation. Do you know, the media was near death. The New York Times was
hanging on the short hairs. Do you know Vanity Fair was going under. CNN barely had a fraction," Drudge said. "Trump has saved
the media."
The influential news figure also called attention to the president's flagging approval ratings in Rasmussen polls, which he
is concerned currently spell danger for the Trump administration.
Nick Begich - Wikipedia
Dr. Nick Begich
is the eldest son of the late United States Congressman from Alaska, Nick Begich Sr., and political
activist Pegge Begich. He is well known in Alaska for his own political activities. He was twice
elected President of both the Alaska Federation of Teachers and the Anchorage Council of Education.
He has been pursuing independent research in the sciences and politics for most of his adult life.
Begich received Doctor of Medicine (Medicina Alternitiva), honoris causa, for independent work in
health and political science, from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines,
Colombo, Sri Lanka, in November 1994.
"... What is being developed in the US under the codename Prompt Global Strike are non-nuclear strategic weapons. ..."
"... they will be more humane than nuclear weapons, because there will be no radiation, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki effect. However, in terms of military superiority, my friends at the Defence Ministry tell me the effect will be more devastating than from a modern nuclear bomb. ..."
"... What's more, our American partners are not abandoning the programme of deploying weapons in outer space, and they are essentially alone in voting against the initiatives co-sponsored by us, China and many other colleagues to commit not to do so. ..."
"... The Americans refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is also an important strategic stability factor. And of course the global missile defence system has an absolutely direct impact on strategic stability. ..."
"... Another point: imbalances in conventional weapons, which are also being modernised very quickly. ..."
Question: US President Donald Trump, in a recent statement,
unexpectedly proposed revisiting the issue of reducing strategic arms as a platform for bargaining.
Should strategic nuclear forces today be a subject of negotiations with the Americans or would it
be advisable at this point to put them outside the bounds of Russian-US relations?
Sergey Lavrov: To a very large extent, President Trump's position on the majority
of key issues on the foreign policy agenda, including further steps to limit strategic nuclear weapons
as you've mentioned, has yet to be finalized. By the way, if I remember right, Donald Trump mentioned
the issue of cooperation with us in this field as an example. He was asked whether he would be prepared
to lift sanctions on Russia. I believe that was the way the question was formulated. He responded
by saying they should see if there were issues on which they could cooperate with Russia on a mutually
beneficial basis in US interests, in particular, mentioning nuclear arms control.
At the same time, as you know, the US president said the Americans should modernise and build
up their nuclear triad. We need to wait until the military budget is finally approved under the new
administration and see what its priorities and objectives are and how these funds will be spent.
As for our further conversation, I briefly mentioned in my address that we are ready for such
a conversation but it should be conducted with acknowledgment of all strategic stability factors
without exception. Today, those who propose implementing the so-called nuclear zero initiative as
soon as possible, banning and destroying nuclear weapons and generally outlawing them absolutely,
ignore the fact that since the nuclear bomb was made and this new kind of weapon began to be produced
on a large scale in the USSR, the US, China, France and the UK, colossal changes have taken place
in military science and technology.
What is being developed in the US under the codename Prompt Global Strike are non-nuclear
strategic weapons. If they are developed (and this work is moving forward very actively, with
the objective of reaching any point in the world within an hour), of course, they will be more
humane than nuclear weapons, because there will be no radiation, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki effect.
However, in terms of military superiority, my friends at the Defence Ministry tell me the effect
will be more devastating than from a modern nuclear bomb.
What's more, our American partners are not abandoning the programme of deploying weapons in
outer space, and they are essentially alone in voting against the initiatives co-sponsored by us,
China and many other colleagues to commit not to do so.
The Americans refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is also an important
strategic stability factor. And of course the global missile defence system has an absolutely direct
impact on strategic stability.
Another point: imbalances in conventional weapons, which are also being modernised very quickly.
We always begin our dialogue with NATO by stressing the need to restore normal relations. We
propose normalisation and agreements on mutual verification measures but before that, it is necessary
to sit down and look at what each of us has deployed in proximity to each other, as well as in the
entire Euro-Atlantic region. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered if we want not
simply to ban nuclear weapons as idealists, but to ensure peace and security in the world and ensure
strategic stability that will be sustainable and based on global parity. Everything that I've mentioned
needs to be discussed. I may have missed some other factors.
I should also add that restrictions imposed by Russia and the US on each other have reached a
point where it is hard to say that we will be able to do a great deal together anymore. All states
that have nuclear weapons should be brought in – importantly, not only those that have them officially
but also de facto.
Yes, There Really Are Things We Can Do to Reduce the Trade Deficit
Donald Trump's bluster about imposing large tariffs and force companies to make things in America
has led to backlash where we have people saying things to the effect that we are in a global economy
and we just can't do anything about shifting from foreign produced items to domestically produced
items. Paul Krugman's blogpost * on trade can be seen in this light, although it is not exactly what
he say and he surely knows better.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the goods
we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more expensive
to produce goods in the United States.
This is of course true, but that doesn't mean that higher import prices would not lead to a shift
towards domestic production. For example, if we take the case of transport equipment he highlights,
if all the parts that we imported cost 20 percent more, then over time we would expect car producers
in the United States to produce with a larger share of domestically produced parts than would otherwise
be the case. This doesn't mean that imported parts go to zero, or even that they necessarily fall,
but just that they would be less than would be the case if import prices were 20 percent lower. This
is pretty much basic economics -- at a higher price we buy less.
While arbitrary tariffs are not a good way to raise the relative price of imports, we do have
an obvious tool that is designed for exactly this purpose. We can reduce the value of the dollar
against the currencies of our trading partners. This is probably best done through negotiations,
** which would inevitably involve trade-offs (e.g. less pressure to enforce U.S. patents and copyrights
and less concern about access for the U.S. financial industry). Loud threats against our trading
partners are likely to prove counter-productive. (We should also remove the protectionist barriers
that keep our doctors and dentists from enjoying the full benefits of international competition.)
Anyhow, we can do something about our trade deficits if had a president who thought seriously
about the issue. As it is, the current occupant of the White House seems to not know which way is
up when it comes to trade.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the
goods we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more
expensive to produce goods in the United States.
== end of quote ==
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones ...
The problems is that many strategically important, high technology components production
is offshored.
"... " This looks more like what you'd see in a banana republic, " says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group. " You've got a strongman who surrounds himself with billionaires or wealthy advisers who conduct the business of government to benefit their business. " ..."
"... In the first paragraph, we're told that jobs are moving to Mexico -- as usual. It's taken for granted (and without much concern here from Krugman) that US employers are going to keep exporting manufacturing jobs. This is followed by a defense of NAFTA, an attack on protectionism, and the suggestion that there is no alternative better than the status quo. And Democrats wonder why they're losing the Rust Belt states? ..."
"... The governmental action that was probably most important in creating the rust belt was the Reagan tax cuts. Those came as the Volcker effort to end inflation was still happening. That had to be continued, so the Reagan deficit could not be paid by inflating the money supply, and the necessary US bond sales kept our interest rate up, making the US the best place in the world to park money. Foreign exchange poured in, and the dollar's value soared by 70%. That rise made foreign production cheaper to Americans, and made US production uncompetitive elsewhere. ..."
"... Isn't this the same question that the British asked in 1845. The only thing we really know is that there are millions who no longer have a role in our economy. ..."
"... Liberals and Conservatives will not emerge until after the purge. Paul Krugman and Paul Ryan are part of the same priesthood of the only acceptable theology the Church of Neoliberalism. The belong to the same Tory Party of Robert Peel the only debate is about how best to grow the economy. ..."
"... The world's financial elite all fly the same flag called the Jolly Roger and finally we have a US government not ashamed to unfurl it. ..."
"... globalization has clearly not produced the promised big boost in overall growth in this country - economists would not be talking about "secular stagnation" if it had. ..."
"... Instead of denying the obvious facts and trying to divert the discussion with false claims about robots, why don't US economist try to work through the complications of trade and aim at policies which really would benefit US workers and might reduce the ever-growing inequality? Do they need to devote all their attention to defending the Democratic political establishment and their own failed theories and assumptions? ..."
"... It is obvious to most that the huge trade surge with China disrupted many commodity industries, steel, solar cells, electronics. ..."
"... If you do not see nothing obviously wrong, when a US company , bailed out by the US taxpayer, thanks the tax payer by importing cars made at Chinese wages to the US, putting out of work US workers, you must be a macro economist. ..."
"... Nowhere on the GM website is mentioned that those cars are made in China. Check ..."
"... the effective ban on big Western internet services like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as local data storage rules for those who are allowed to operate. It's all done in the name of security ..."
Amazing how so many conservatives dismiss what Krugman as to say since he's so clearly a 'commie.'
Then they support Trump the capitalist businessman who will get things done.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Krugman is writing capitalist essays on his blog about the benefits
of Trade, and trump is running a kleptocracy that seeks to bring back a disproven form of protectionism
that would be much more at home among early 20th century socialists than with Milton Freedman
or Adam Smith.
It goes to show that the Republicans are a party without a purpose. They have given up on their
capitalist roots and instead just cater to the whims of the highest bidding campaign contributors
and the worst instincts of their bigoted base.
Paul Mathisis a trusted commenter Fairfax, Virginia
1 day ago
Nobody Knew Trade Could Be So Complicated!
Actually everybody knows that negotiating trade deals takes years of intensive efforts because
there are many moving parts that all affect each other.
Since Trump has the attention span of the average 3 year old, he has no time for anything more
complicated than banning Muslims from traveling to America. That simple "solution" did not work
out either.
So Trump is not going to do anything on trade simply because it is way too complicated and
time consuming. After all, he couldn't even spend 3 weeks on replacing Obamacare with his "fantastic"
plan. One month ago:
"We have a plan that I think is going to be fantastic. . . . I think it's going to be something
special ... I think you're going to like what you hear." --CNN
Re: "Oh, and China currency manipulation was an issue 5 years ago - but isn't now." I find
this interesting. Five years ago China was building up their reserves by purchasing US government
and agency bonds to keep their exchange rate low. Today those reserves of government and agency
bonds are falling as they are converted into US real estate and corporate assets while the trade
deficit remains at some $500 billion. This is supposed to make everything OK. What am I missing
here? http://www.rweconomics.com/htm/WDCh_2.htm
China has more than 1.3 billion people, and wages in China have risen faster for a longer period
of time than anywhere ever.
It's not a mystery why wages in China are what they are. It started as a poor country with
an enormous, mostly rural population. If anything, the surprise is that they have managed to increase
wages so strongly for so long.
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about trade and immigration, of course, but understanding
Trump requires one to abandon the notion that he is appealing to legitimate concerns.
He is appealing to spite. Anything resembling a legitimate concern is pretense, to give cover
to what would otherwise be recognized as ugly and deplorable. He says the spiteful parts loudly
and doesn't even feign competence or coherence on policy.
Once this is fully recognized, all that he says and does makes sense. It also suggests that
people interested in real substantive policy discussions should disregard Trump entirely.
Dr. K. is correct we should watch what DJT actually does, instead of what he says, though what
DJT says is designed to whip up his partisans by pointing to real issues, but instead of blaming
the ' lost factories ' and ' stripped wealth ' on the portion of economic strata DJT inhabits
- which is where the wealth stripping/lost factory hedgies and sacrosanct banker pay contract
holders also exist - DJT always points somewhere else.
Somewhere else is a moving target that can shift each time a new sun rises on the Twitter-verse.
And it's hard to see how everyone will continue to admire the Emperor's new clothes when the
stock markets reverse course, or if there is a 2011 re-dux next month over House GOP'ers raising
the debt ceiling.
Anyhoooo, the best indicator of how things are going regarding economic policies at the White
House is to see how DJT adviser Carl Icahn has benefited from specific policy carve-outs:
" This looks more like what you'd see in a banana republic, " says Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen,
a liberal watchdog group. " You've got a strongman who surrounds himself with billionaires or
wealthy advisers who conduct the business of government to benefit their business. "
Though DJT may be correct there are issues with NAFTA and at WTO, those issues are preferable
to bald-faced kleptocracy.
In the first paragraph, we're told that jobs are moving to Mexico -- as usual. It's taken for
granted (and without much concern here from Krugman) that US employers are going to keep exporting
manufacturing jobs. This is followed by a defense of NAFTA, an attack on protectionism, and the
suggestion that there is no alternative better than the status quo. And Democrats wonder why they're
losing the Rust Belt states?
Trump's record low approval rating is likely to take a further hit in the near future from
deteriorating economic conditions. Measures of consumer and business confidence soared since the
election yet hard economic data continues to weaken with the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow estimate of
first quarter GDP growth falling to just 0.9%, after this morning's weak personal income and spending
report. Indeed, growth in real personal consumption expenditures peaked way back in January 2015.
While there was a mild rebound that started in March 2016 the trend has since turned negative
since the start of the 2017. See chart:
Interesting fact is the recent polarization of consumer confidence readings. Democrats are
generally pessimists while Republicans are optimistic about the economy. That suggests consumer
confidence readings will fall when Republicans get over their infatuation with Trump. And will
most likely be driven by disappointing economic growth -- actual growth and not empty promises.
Trump promised 4% growth which is impossible over the long term due to slow population growth.
Yet, that growth rate now looks far out of reach even for a single quarter and fiscal stimulus
looks less and less likely to happen even if some tax cuts for the wealthy do manage to pass Congress.
Tax cuts are not stimulative if they heavily favor the wealthy. Probably the opposite is true
considering the Bush tax cuts were so ineffective.
Krugman is an economist; he's not merely trying to sway voters. And he knows that the decline
in industrial jobs is more due to productivity gains than factories' moving abroad. In any case,
measures like Trump's scolding businessmen is not and will not be important in keeping jobs from
leaving. More important is the exchange rate.
The governmental action that was probably most important in creating the rust belt was the
Reagan tax cuts. Those came as the Volcker effort to end inflation was still happening. That had
to be continued, so the Reagan deficit could not be paid by inflating the money supply, and the
necessary US bond sales kept our interest rate up, making the US the best place in the world to
park money. Foreign exchange poured in, and the dollar's value soared by 70%. That rise made foreign
production cheaper to Americans, and made US production uncompetitive elsewhere.
But the decline in manufacturing would be happening regardless. It is the same process that
did in most US family farms throughout the 20th century. US farming is now so efficient that farmers,
once 3/4 of us, are now as small a fraction of Americans as "gardeners, groundskeepers, and growers
of ornamental plants." The same thing is now happening to factories; we're just too efficient
at making things to require the number of manufacturing workers we once did.
Ron Cohenis a trusted commenter Waltham, MA
20 hours ago
Prof. Krugman, in your column today about Coal Country, you rightfully identify it as a state
of mind. But that state of mind is not nostaglia as you argue. Rather, it is a profound cultural
resentment that motivates the voters of West Virginia.
For perspective on this subject, I urge you to read Arlie Hochschild's, widely praised, "Strangers
in Their Own Land." http://thenewpress.com/node/10362
.
All but one of the columns, below, are from The New York Times. Taken together, they form a
coda to Hochschild's book. I suggest you start with the last one, Sabrina Tavernise's piece.
Bernie Sanders Has A Plan To Win Back Trump Voters, The Huffington Post, March 9, 2017
http://tinyurl.com/zy2nzxh
Trump Budget Proposal Reflects Working-Class Resentment of the Poor, Eduardo Porter, March
7, 2017 http://tinyurl.com/ho5zkha
Thank you or the opportunity of answering your question with my question.
Isn't this the same question that the British asked in 1845. The only thing we really know
is that there are millions who no longer have a role in our economy.
Liberals and Conservatives will not emerge until after the purge. Paul Krugman and Paul
Ryan are part of the same priesthood of the only acceptable theology the Church of Neoliberalism.
The belong to the same Tory Party of Robert Peel the only debate is about how best to grow the
economy.
The question that comes to my mind is why do we want to grow an economy where production exceeds
demand every day and our ideological Dogma says we must work even harder than ever to increase
the inequality between supply and demand?
We have ceded control to the Whigs and I fear it isn't only 3 million Irish peasants who will
disappear. The conversion of dollars into real estate really struck a high note as those worthless
hovels that housed 3 million economically worthless peasants provided room for what was most important
in the Irish economy pigs and cattle. Again I feel I must repeat there was no famine in Ireland
it was a failure of potato crops and each year Ireland exported enough food to feed all of Ireland's
hungry for seven potatoless years. Then as now the bible was The Economist.
The world's financial elite all fly the same flag called the Jolly Roger and finally we
have a US government not ashamed to unfurl it.
A good start would be to insist on living wages in mexico and Asia along with humane working
conditions. That's a starting position a trump or Clinton administration would never consider,
but Sanders would have. Bringing those changes about would create more of a level playing field
for US workers. Also if China isn't controlling currency anymore why is labor still so cheap.?
It can't be fully explained by excess labor supply. Something must be going on, and we should
be trying to figure it out.
skeptonomistis a trusted commenter Tennessee
1 day ago
lt's true that modern trade is very complicated but certain things are obvious. One is that
the US runs huge trade deficits, amounting to nearly $750 billion in goods. Yes, this is obviously
bigly unfair to the United States, that is considering the majority of its citizens and especially
wage earners, who have been put into competition with those in developing countries, rather than
the capitalists whose profits have been increased by the lower wage costs. Those goods represent
a very large number of jobs that are now in other countries. Another is that globalization has
clearly not produced the promised big boost in overall growth in this country - economists would
not be talking about "secular stagnation" if it had.
Instead of denying the obvious facts and trying to divert the discussion with false claims
about robots, why don't US economist try to work through the complications of trade and aim at
policies which really would benefit US workers and might reduce the ever-growing inequality? Do
they need to devote all their attention to defending the Democratic political establishment and
their own failed theories and assumptions?
Trade is a tough policy to debate with people and come to consensus. It is obvious to most
that the huge trade surge with China disrupted many commodity industries, steel, solar cells,
electronics. More should have been done to minimize the disruption. That said we are where we
are.
Our manufacturing now is higher up the value chain. Our commodity mills now need to innovate
to take advantage of niche higher value low volume markets that big producers can't supply effectively.
Innovate to develop new materials and specialized processes that displace current materials. Innovation,
flexibility and agility is our competitive advantage. Time to make the jobs of the future, commodity
production is in the past.
"But even there it's not obvious what you would demand from a new agreement."
Let me help out the professor with an article from the NY Times 3/30/17 and provide an obvious
example
"China's Taxes on Imported Cars Feed Trade Tensions With U.S."
reporting that a Jeep retailing for $ $40,530 in the US cost in China , quote " $ $71,000,
mostly because of taxes that Beijing charges on every car, minivan and sport utility vehicle that
is made in another country"
Meanwhile , quote "General Motors started shipping the Buick Envision model from a factory
in eastern China's Shandong Province to the United States last year. That decision irritated the
United Automobile Workers union"
But that is not all. The NY Times reported on 1/29/16 that GM's Cadillac devision started to
import its " plug-in hybrid version of its new CT6 flagship sedan from China " and "A PEEK under
the hood of three new cars from Buick and Cadillac will not reveal a Made in China label"
If you do not see nothing obviously wrong, when a US company , bailed out by the US taxpayer,
thanks the tax payer by importing cars made at Chinese wages to the US, putting out of work US
workers, you must be a macro economist.
Either US consumer win (cheaper cars) or US companies (more profit for the stock holders).
Final Note
Nowhere on the GM website is mentioned that those cars are made in China. Check
Ron,
Europe's parliamentary democracies have always given the 20% an outsized role in elections and
governance because coalitions are the rule not the exception and 20% is a lot of seats.
From here on a less than 4 hour drive to Waltham it looks like your 20% has the house, the senate,
the executive and soon the courts and the Supreme Court.
Donald Trump was a wake-up call for the world's 80% as Europe like North America is over 80% urban.
If Trump had the attention span and work ethic needed to become a dictator, he would seek the
confrontation over expelling the undocumented, not over trade. Trade isn't visceral enough, not
existential enough, to sustain the fear of the Other a dictator needs.
On China, there actually are a few obvious imbalances that affect the tech industry, though
it's doubtful the US has the leverage to change them.
The first comes from the Chinese government's drive to build their domestic tech industry by
coercing technology transfer from Western firms outsourcing manufacturing in China.
The second is the effective ban on big Western internet services like Google, Facebook, and
Twitter, as well as local data storage rules for those who are allowed to operate. It's all done
in the name of security (and censorship), of course, but it's also an obvious form of protectionism. Baidu and Weibo might not exist otherwise.
The government is also investing in a Chinese variant
of Linux, no doubt with the ultimate goal of gaining complete control over all software running
inside the country.
Indeed for Mr. McCain the
belief that Russia
must be destroyed has been elevated to the status of a self evident and received truth.
Origins of the 'Dodgy Dossier'
It was McCain who passed
the "dodgy dossier" on Trump to the FBI, after receiving it from former UK ambassador to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood. Contained
within the dossier is information purporting to reveal how Trump has been compromised by Russian intelligence over various sexual
encounters with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. Compounding the scandal, adding to the lurid nature of it, are reports of
the existence of a second Russian dossier on the President-elect.
The dossier's originator has been revealed as former British MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who now runs a private
intelligence company and has, according to reports, gone into hiding in the UK, supposedly fearing assassination by Russian agents.
The fact that Mr. Steele hasn't set foot in Russia for a number of years and reportedly, on behalf of Trump's enemies within
the Republican Party establishment, paid for the information contained in the 35-page dossier, recently released with the caveat
that its contents cannot be verified, should have been more than enough to have it instantly dismissed as, well, fake news?
In an
article that appeared on the UK's Independent newspaper website - titled "The dodgy Donald Trump dossier reminds
me of the row over Saddam Hussein and his fictitious weapons of mass destruction" - Patrick Cockburn writes, "I read the text
of the dossier on
Donald Trump's alleged dirty dealings with a scepticism that soon turned into complete disbelief." Later in the same
article he observes, "In its determination to damage Trump, the US press corps has been happy to suspend disbelief in this dubious
document."
More significant than the fact this dossier was not immediately dismissed is the timing of its emergence and subsequent publication
by the US news site, BuzzFeed. It comes on the very cusp of President-elect Donald Trump's official inauguration as the 45
th President of the United States on January 20th, and the very point at which his cabinet appointees were being grilled
over their views of Russia, the threat Russia allegedly poses to the US and the West, during their official Senate confirmation
hearings.
Political Coup Underway Against Trump
By now most people are aware, or at least should be, of Washington's long and ignoble history when it comes to fomenting, planning,
supporting, and funding political and military coups around the world - in Central and Latin America, the Middle East, Africa,
and elsewhere the CIA and other US agencies have brought down countless leaders and governments that have refused to toe the line
when it comes to serving US interests.
In unprecedented fashion, what we have in this instance are those same deep state actors, working in conjunction with the US
liberal establishment, currently engaged in a coup designed to destroy the Trump presidency - if not before it begins then certainly
soon after, with the prospect of impeachment proceedings against him already being
mooted in Washington circles.
During his recent press
conference , Trump felt minded to declaim against Washington's bloated intelligence community, accusing it of releasing the
dossier to the media, an allegation US intelligence chiefs have denied. The result is an unprecedented open war between the country's
next president and his soon-to-be intelligence services that has pitched the country into a political crisis that grows deeper
by the day.
The Power of the Military Industrial Complex
On the question of why the US deep state and Washington's liberal establishment is so intent on maintaining Russia in the role
of deadly enemy, the answer is very simple - money.
Huge and powerful economic and ideological interests are tied up in the new Сold War of the past few years.
We're talking the country's previously mentioned gargantuan defense and intelligence budgets, continuing US support and financing
of NATO, along with reason for the continued existence and funding of the vast network of political think tanks in Washington
and throughout the West, all of which are committed to sustaining a status quo of US hegemony and unipolarity.
Russia's emergence as a strategic counterweight to the West in recent years has and continues to challenge this hitherto uncontested
hegemony, providing lucrative opportunities for organizations, groups, and individuals with a vested interest in the resulting
new Cold War. For those of a skeptical persuasion in this regard, I refer you to the chilling warning issued by former US President
Dwight D. Eisenhower prior to leaving office in 1960 to make way for his replacement, John F. Kennedy.
In his televised farewell address
to the American people in 1961, Eisenhower said, "We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast
proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually
spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations."
He continued:
"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total
influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.
We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources
and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society."
Finally, Eisenhower warned the American people how, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist."
Though neoconservatives may no longer be in the driving seat in Washington, neoconservative ideas undoubtedly are. And prime
among them is the idea that not only must Russia be destroyed but also anyone who would dare stand in the way of this narrative,
up to and including President-elect Donald J. Trump.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position
of Sputnik.
"... What's more, the overall numbers hide serious declines in most areas of manufacturing. A 2013 paper by Susan Houseman, Timothy Bartik and Timothy Sturgeon found that strong growth in computer-related manufacturing obscured a decline in almost all other areas. "In most of manufacturing," they write, "real GDP growth has been weak or negative and productivity growth modest." ..."
"... And, more troubling, the U.S. is now losing computer manufacturing. Houseman et al. show that U.S. computer production began to fall during the Great Recession. In semiconductors, output has grown slightly, but has been far outpaced by most East Asian countries. Meanwhile, trade deficits in these areas have been climbing. ..."
"... He cites Sematech, a government-led consortium that tried to help the U.S. retain its lead in semiconductor manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s, as a successful example of high-tech industrial policy. ..."
Staying Rich
Without Manufacturing
Will Be Hard
MARCH 28, 2017 8:00
AM EDT
Discussions about
manufacturing tend to
get very contentious.
Many economists and
commentators believe
that there's nothing
inherently special
about making things
and that efforts to
restore U.S.
manufacturing to its
former glory reek of
industrial policy,
protectionism,
mercantilism and
antiquated thinking.
But in their
eagerness to guard
against the return of
these ideas,
manufacturing's
detractors often
overstate their case.
Manufacturing is in
bigger trouble than
the conventional
wisdom would have you
believe.
One common
assertion is that
while manufacturing
jobs have declined,
output has actually
risen. But this piece
of conventional wisdom
is now outdated. U.S.
manufacturing output
is almost exactly the
same as it was just
before the financial
crisis of 2008:
[chart]
In the 1990s, it
really was true that
manufacturing
production was booming
even though employment
in the sector was
falling. During that
decade, output rose by
almost half. That's
almost a 4 percent
annualized growth
rate. The expansion of
the early 2000s, in
contrast, saw
manufacturing increase
by only about 15
percent peak-to-peak
over eight years --
less than a 2 percent
annual growth rate.
And in the eight years
between 2008 and 2016,
the growth rate has
averaged zero.
But even this may
overstate U.S.
manufacturing's
performance. An
alternative measure,
called industrial
production, shows an
outright decrease from
a decade ago:
[chart]
So it isn't just
manufacturing
employment and the
sector's share of
gross domestic product
that are hurting in
the U.S. It's total
output. The U.S.
doesn't really make
more stuff than it
used to.
What's more, the
overall numbers hide
serious declines in
most areas of
manufacturing. A 2013
paper by Susan
Houseman, Timothy
Bartik and Timothy
Sturgeon found that
strong growth in
computer-related
manufacturing obscured
a decline in almost
all other areas. "In
most of
manufacturing," they
write, "real GDP
growth has been weak
or negative and
productivity growth
modest."
And, more
troubling, the U.S. is
now losing computer
manufacturing.
Houseman et al. show
that U.S. computer
production began to
fall during the Great
Recession. In
semiconductors, output
has grown slightly,
but has been far
outpaced by most East
Asian countries.
Meanwhile, trade
deficits in these
areas have been
climbing.
In other words,
Asia is still
solidifying its place
as the workshop of the
world, while the U.S.
de-industrializes. The
1990s provided a brief
respite from this
trend, as new
industries arose to
replace the ones that
had been lost. But the
years since the turn
of the century have
reversed this short
renaissance, and
manufacturing is once
more migrating
overseas.
Manufacturing
skeptics often draw
parallels to what
happened to
agriculture in the
Industrial Revolution.
But the two situations
aren't analogous. In
the 20th century, U.S.
agricultural output
soared even as it shed
jobs and shrank as a
percent of GDP.
Machines replaced most
human farmers, but the
total value of U.S.
crops kept climbing.
Meanwhile, the U.S.
to this day runs a
trade surplus in
agriculture even as it
runs a huge deficit in
manufactured products.
America pays for
computers and cars and
phones with soybeans
and corn and beef.
So U.S.
manufacturing is
hurting in ways that
U.S. agriculture never
did. The common
refrain that the
modern shift to
services parallels the
earlier shift to
industry might turn
out to be true, but
the parallels are not
encouraging.
Faced with this
evidence, many
skeptics will question
why the sector is
important at all. Why
should a country
specialize in making
things, when it can
instead specialize in
designing, marketing
and financing the
making of things?
This is a
legitimate question,
but there are reasons
to think a successful
developed nation still
needs a healthy
manufacturing sector.
Harvard University's
Kennedy School of
Government economist
Ricardo Hausmann
believes that a
country's economic
development depends
crucially on where it
lies in the so-called
product space. If a
country makes complex
products that are
linked to many other
industries -- such as
computers, cars and
chemicals -- it will
be rich. But if it
makes simple products
that don't have much
of a supply chain --
soybeans or oil -- it
will stay poor. In the
past, the U.S. was
very successful at
positioning itself at
the top of the global
value chain. But with
manufacturing's
decline, the rise of
finance, real estate
and other orphaned
service industries may
not be enough to keep
the country rich in
the long run.
More top economists
are starting to come
around to the view
that manufacturing is
important.
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology economist
David Autor, in a
recent phone
conversation, told me
he now believes that
the U.S. should focus
more on industrial
policy designed to
keep cutting-edge
manufacturing
industries in the
country. He cites Sematech, a
government-led
consortium that tried
to help the U.S.
retain its lead in
semiconductor
manufacturing in the
1980s and 1990s, as a
successful example of
high-tech industrial
policy.
The stellar
performance of
semiconductor
manufacturing in the
1990s and 2000s
relative to other
industries in the
sector, as reported by
Houseman et al., seems
like something the
U.S. should aim to
emulate with
next-generation
industries.
So U.S. leaders
should listen to
manufacturing skeptics
a little bit less, and
pay more attention to
those who say the
sector is crucial.
It's worth noting that
President Donald
Trump, who was elected
on a promise to
restore American
manufacturing, has
shown more interest in
cutting government
programs designed to
give industry a
helping hand. If
there's going to be a
U.S. industrial policy
renaissance, it might
not be his
administration that
leads it.
"... The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple. ..."
"... They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly violent way. ..."
"... Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period. That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard of living and uncertain job prospects. ..."
"... US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending. ..."
"... The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human rights and the US' Bill of Rights. ..."
"... The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their media... ..."
The GOP and this administration are overwhelmingly self-avowed Christians yet they
try to deny the poor to benefit the rich. This is not Christian but evil pure and simple.
I would love to see this lying, cheating, selfish, crazy devil (yeah, I know I sound
a bit OTT but the description is fact based) of a president and his enablers challenged
on their Christian values.
They are an American Taliban, just going about their subversion in a less overtly
violent way.
Are the people who consider our current rulers to be "American Taliban" inclined to become
"leakers" of government activities against the citizens, because they definitely stop to consider
the country as their own and view it as occupied by dangerous and violent religious cult?
Much like Russian people viewed the country under Bolshevism, outside of brief WWII period.
That's probably why we have Anti-Russian witch hunt now. To stem this trend. But it is the US
neoliberal elite, not Russians, who drive the country to this state of affairs. By spending God
knows how many trillions of dollar of wars of neoliberal empire expansion and by drastic redistribution
of wealth up. And now the majority of citizens is facing substandard medical care, sliding standard
of living and uncertain job prospects.
ilsm -> libezkova... March 26, 2017 at 05:42 AM
I see the angst over Sessions talking to a Russia diplomat twice as a red herring.
US elections have been influenced by anyone with huge money or oil since the Cold War made
an excuse for the US' trade empire enforced by half the world's war spending.
The fake 'incidental' surveillance of other political opponents is a gross violation of human
rights and the US' Bill of Rights.
The disloyal opposition and its propagandists are running Stalin like show trails in their
media.....
"... "They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said. ..."
"... "That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he said. "Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it." ..."
"... "I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded. ..."
"... Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually makes stopping attacks more difficult. ..."
"... "This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said. ..."
"... "Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count." ..."
"... Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state... "They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor is..." ..."
NSA whistleblower William Binney told Tucker Carlson on Friday that the NSA is spying on "all
the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as
well as the White House."
Binney, who served the NSA for 30 years before blowing the whistle on domestic spying in 2001, told
Tucker he firmly believes that Trump was spied on.
"They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting
all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said.
"That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he
said. "Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards,
things like that, all of it."
"Inside NSA there are a set of people who are -- and we got this from another NSA whistleblower
who witnessed some of this -- they're inside there, they are targeting and looking at all the members
of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the
White House," Binney said.
"And all this data is inside the NSA in a small group where they're looking at it. The idea is
to see what people in power over you are going to -- what they think, what they think you should
be doing or planning to do to you, your budget, or whatever so you can try to counteract before it
actually happens," he said.
"I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded.
Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually
makes stopping attacks more difficult.
"This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they
can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said.
"Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been
going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was
challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count."
Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state... "They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor
is..."
Bringing history more up to date, this is Stalinism, i.e., fascism. As John
T. Flynn states, "Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator." Neo-fascism of course
is Stalinism-blame Hitler.
So, is it fascism?
Yes, says Major Todd Pierce (retired) in an interview with Philip Weiss of
Mondoweiss - who says NSA whistle blower Bill Binney has "got to be one of the smartest
people in the world, I don't think that's an exaggeration. He was one of the smartest
people at the NSA.
Says Weiss: "And he agrees with me fully. Because he's seen the NSA. We're
a more sophisticated form of what I think has to be called fascism. The term fascism was
applied to the way the communists and Stalin got on as well. You bring the term fascist to what
it really means, and that ultimately is, ultramilitarism and authoritarianism combined with
an expansionist foreign policy. And that's us-what you can see us becoming."
The Roman Empire's death was far more complicated than "moral rot" and its "currency
devaluation." Read some history books.
Chris Hedges makes the observation that ALL empires that are scourges of the earth,
eventually turn inwards. As the empire begins its fatal decline, the terror they inflicted on
outsiders, is then turned against its own citizens.
We now see that happening in America. Banks, corporations, intel/military, etc. are turning
inward: destroying meaningful employment, humane health care, and pilfering billions of $s
reserved for the 1%.
Just Another Vi... -> FriendlyAquaponics •Mar 25, 2017 8:05 PM
A video worth revisiting......
Reuters ..........
... Obama criticizes Donald Trump endlessly....over Trumps assertions that the election is
rigged..,
telling the candidate to "stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes."
That's right, the DOD. They can't go completely rogue, without the explicit or implicit
approval of the Secretary of Defense and his Deputies.
It is rather phoney and hypocritical of any POTUS - including Pres. Thump - to moan about the
NSA, without loping off heads at the DOD and NSA. By that, I include all the Deputies, who do
the real work and know the real secrets.
It's time that Thump had a "Come to Jesus" meeting with all these guys. Else he's part of the
problem, and no amount of sugar coating can stop a turd being a turd.
TheReplacement -> HRClinton •Mar 25, 2017 9:42 PM
In an honest world, sure.
In reality, no. Like Binney said, they don't have to do anything they don't like because
NOBODY can prove they haven't complied with orders. There is nobody who can watch the
watchers. They can blackmail anyone.
'Gosh, I have no idea how that child porn got on my computer.'
CIA or NSA knows exactly how it got there. They put it there.
Trump has described his son-in-law as a "great guy". The president-elect has also reportedly taken
the unprecedented step of requesting security clearance for Kushner to attend top-secret presidential
briefings, the first one of which was on Tuesday. It's unclear if the request will be approved. It
marks an astonishing departure and invites the accusation of nepotism.
Kushner's options for a White House job are limited given his family ties to the president, Richard
Painter, who served as President George W Bush's White House ethics lawyer, told the Associated Press.
Congress passed an anti-nepotism law in 1967 that prohibits the president from appointing a family
member – including a son-in-law – to work in the office or agency they oversee. The measure was passed
after President John F Kennedy appointed his brother, Robert Kennedy, as attorney general.
But the law does not appear to prevent Kushner from serving as an unpaid adviser, and few doubt
that Kushner will play a decisive role in shaping the Trump presidency, acting as policy adviser
and gate-keeper. As
Trump and Barack Obama met privately at the White House last week, Kushner strolled the mansion's
South Lawn, deep in conversation with Obama's chief of staff. As Kushner walked through the bustling
West Wing during Trump's visit last week, he was heard asking Obama aides: "How many of these people
stay?", apparently blissfully unaware that the entire West Wing staff will leave at the end of Obama's
term.
His contacts already include Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch; he has received foreign ambassadors.
Like Trump, Kushner has never had a formal role in government, but he now appears set to be more
important than many who do.
we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but far fewer
are paying for it. And advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. So you can see why
we need to ask for your help. The Guardian's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of
time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because
it might well be your perspective, too.
Fund our journalism and together we can keep the world informed.
"... Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can be
unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all of the
unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You can keep tabs
on them every time they end up being incidentally collected. ..."
"... You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas? Your
communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced off various
targets over the last several years. ..."
"... This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's nomination
to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary
of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak appear
to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag. ..."
"... Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday
that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. ..."
"... The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal
on N.Korea etc? ..."
"... But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches
of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely. ..."
"... It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials..
..."
The rank and file of the IC are not involved in this. So let's not tar everyone with the same brush, but Obama revised executive
order 12333 so that communication intercepts incidentally collected dont have to be masked and may be shared freely in the IC.
Now we have "synthetic" surveillance. You don't even need a court order. Now all incidental communication intercepts can
be unmasked. One can search their huge databases for all the incidental communications of someone of interest, then collect all
of the unmasked incidental communications that involve that person and put them together in one handy dandy report. Viola! You
can keep tabs on them every time they end up being incidentally collected.
You ever went to an embassy party? Talked to a drug dealer or mafia guy without being aware of it? Correspond overseas?
Your communications have been "incidentally" collected too. There is so much surveillance out there we have probably all bounced
off various targets over the last several years.
What might your "synthetic" surveillance report look like?
There's way more going on here then first alleged. From Bloomberg, not my choice for news, but There is another component to
this story as well -- as Trump himself just tweeted.
It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S. citizens, let alone senior U.S.
officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009 when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls
between a senior Aipac lobbyist and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets. This is for good reason.
Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy
reputations from the cloak of anonymity.
This is what police states do. In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence reports). John Bolton's
nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in 2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests
when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations
with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.
Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me Monday
that he saw the leaks about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak as part of a pattern. "There does appear to be a well orchestrated
effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration," he said. "From the leaking of phone calls between the president and
foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security
clearances, it looks like a pattern."
@?realDonaldTrump?
The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening
as I deal on N.Korea etc?
President Trump was roundly mocked among liberals for that tweet. But he is, in many ways, correct. These leaks are an enormous
problem. And in a less polarized context, they would be recognized immediately for what they clearly are: an effort to manipulate
public opinion for the sake of achieving a desired political outcome. It's weaponized spin.............
But no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political
branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely.
It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials..
..... But the answer isn't to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage - or with a disinformation campaign waged
by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.....
Donald Trump is about to break the record of withdrawing his promises faster than any other US
president in history. It's not only the fact that his administration has been literally taken over
by Goldman Sachs, the top vampire-bank of the Wall Street mafia.
Recently, Trump announced another big alliance with the vulture billionaire, Paul Singer, who,
initially, was supposedly against him. It looks like the Trump big show continues.
The 'anti-establishment Trump' joke has already collapsed and the US middle class is about be
eliminated by the syndicate of the united billionaires under Trump administration.
As Greg Palast told to Thom Hartmann:
Paul Singer whose nickname is "the vulture", he didn't get that nickname because he is a sweet
an honest businessman. This is the guy who closed the Delphi auto plants in Ohio and sent them to
China and also to Monterrey-Mexico. Donald Trump as a candidate, excoriated the billionaires who
sent Delphi auto parts company down to Mexico.
Paul Singer has two concerns: one of them is that we eliminate the banking regulations known as
Dodd–Frank. He is called 'the vulture' cause he eats companies that died. He has invested heavily
in banks that died. He makes his billions from government bail-outs, he has never made a product
in his life, it's all money and billions made from your money, out of the US treasury.
He is against what Obama created, which is a system under Dodd–Frank, called 'living wheels',
where if a bank starts going bankrupt, they don't call the US treasury for bail-out. These banks
go out of business and they are broken up so we don't have to pay for the bail-out. Singer wants
to restore the system of bailouts because that's where he makes his money.
The Mercers are the real big money behind Donald Trump. When Trump was in trouble in the general
election he was out of money and he was out of ideas and he was losing. It was the Mercers, Robert,
who is the principal at the Renaissance Technologies, basically investment banking sharks, that's
all they are. They are market gamblers and banking sharks, and that's how he made his billions, he
hasn't created a single job as Donald Trump himself like to mention.
Both the vulture and the Mercers, they don't pay the same taxes as the rest. They don't pay regular
income taxes. They have a special billionaires loophole called 'carried interest'. They were two
candidates who said that they would close that loophole: one was Bernie Sanders and the other, believe
it or not, was Donald Trump, it was part of his populist movie, he said ' These Wall Street sharks,
they don't build anything, they don't create a single job, when they lose we pay, when they win,
they get a tax-break called carried interest. I will close that loophole. ' Has he said a word
about that loophole? It passed away.
His political activities include funding the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and he has
written against raising taxes for the 1% and aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act. Singer is active in Republican
Party politics and collectively, Singer and others affiliated with Elliott Management are "the top
source of contributions" to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
A number of sources have branded him a "vulture capitalist", largely on account of his role at
EMC, which has been called a vulture fund. Elliott was termed by The Independent as "a pioneer in
the business of buying up sovereign bonds on the cheap, and then going after countries for unpaid
debts", and in 1996, Singer began using the strategy of purchasing sovereign debt from nations in
or near default-such as Argentina, ]- through his NML Capital Limited and Congo-Brazzaville through
Kensington International Inc. Singer's business model of purchasing distressed debt from companies
and sovereign states and pursuing full payment through the courts has led to criticism, while Singer
and EMC defend their model as "a fight against charlatans who refuse to play by the market's rules."
In 1996, Elliott bought defaulted Peruvian debt for $11.4 million. Elliott won a $58 million judgement
when the ruling was overturned in 2000, and Peru had to repay the sum in full under the pari passu
rule. When former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori was attempting to flee the country due to facing
legal proceedings over human rights abuses and corruption, Singer ordered the confiscation of his
jet and offered to let him leave the country in exchange for the $58 million payment from the treasury,
an offer which Fujimori accepted. A subsequent 2002 investigation by the Government of Peru into
the incident and subsequent congressional report, uncovered instances of corruption since Elliott
was not legally authorized to purchase the Peruvian debt from Swiss Bank Corporation without the
prior approval of the Peruvian government, and thus the purchase had occurred in breach of contract.
At the same time, Elliott's representative, Jaime Pinto, had been formerly employed by the Peruvian
Ministry of Economy and Finance and had contact with senior officials. According to the Wall Street
Journal, the Peruvian government paid Elliott $56 million to settle the case.
After Argentina defaulted on its debt in 2002, the Elliott-owned company NML Capital Limited refused
to accept the Argentine offer to pay less than 30 cents per dollar of debt. With a face value of
$630 million, the bonds were reportedly bought by NML for $48 million, with Elliott assessing the
bonds as worth $2.3 billion with accrued interest. Elliott sued Argentina for the debt's value, and
the lower UK courts found that Argentina had state immunity. Elliott successfully appealed the case
to the UK Supreme Court, which ruled that Elliott had the right to attempt to seize Argentine property
in the United Kingdom. Alternatively, before 2011, US courts ruled against allowing creditors to
seize Argentine state assets in the United States. On October 2, 2012 Singer arranged for a Ghanaian
Court order to detain the Argentine naval training vessel ARA Libertad in a Ghanaian port, with the
vessel to be used as collateral in an effort to force Argentina to pay the debt. Refusing to pay,
Argentina shortly thereafter regained control of the ship after its seizure was deemed illegal by
the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Alleging the incident lost Tema Harbour $7.6 million
in lost revenue and unpaid docking fees, Ghana in 2012 was reportedly considering legal action against
NML for the amount.
His firm... is so influential that fear of its tactics helped shape the current 2012 Greek debt
restructuring." Elliott was termed by The Independent as "a pioneer in the business of buying up
sovereign bonds on the cheap, and then going after countries for unpaid debts", and in 1996, Singer
began using the strategy of purchasing sovereign debt from nations in or near default-such as Argentina,
Peru-through his NML Capital Limited and Congo-Brazzaville through Kensington International Inc.
In 2004, then first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund Anne Osborn Krueger
denounced the strategy, alleging that it has "undermined the entire structure of sovereign finance."
we wrote that " Trump's rhetoric is concentrated around a racist delirium.
He avoids to take direct position on social matters, issues about inequality, etc. Of course he does,
he is a billionaire! Trump will follow the pro-establishment agenda of protecting Wall Street and
big businesses. And here is the fundamental difference with Bernie Sanders. Bernie says no more war
and he means it. He says more taxes for the super-rich and he means it. Free healthcare and education
for all the Americans, and he means it. In case that Bernie manage to beat Hillary, the establishment
will definitely turn to Trump who will be supported by all means until the US presidency. "
Yet, we would never expect that Trump would verify us, that fast.
"... Past administrations of both parties have been vigorous supporters of longer and stronger patent and copyright protections. These protections can raise the price of protected items by factors of ten or even a hundred, making them equivalent to tariffs of 1000 and 10,000 percent. These protections lead to the same sorts of economic distortion and corruption that economists would predict from tariffs of this size. ..."
"... Trump administration officials at a Group of 20 summit rejected concerns about spreading protectionism and made clear that the new administration would seek different approaches to global commerce. ..."
"... The United States influence over the Group of 20 nations, even when the US is supposedly taking generally unpopular stances is striking and makes me wonder why there is no open dissent. What is supposed to be unpopular may be less so among G20 governments than commonly assumed. ..."
The United States Has Been for Selective Protectionism, Not Free Trade
The New York Times might have wrongly lead readers to believe that presidents prior to Donald
Trump supported free trade in an article * noting his refusal to go along with a G-20 statement proclaiming
the importance of free trade. This is not true.
Past administrations of both parties have been vigorous supporters of longer and stronger patent
and copyright protections. These protections can raise the price of protected items by factors of
ten or even a hundred, making them equivalent to tariffs of 1000 and 10,000 percent. These protections
lead to the same sorts of economic distortion and corruption that economists would predict from tariffs
of this size.
Past administrations have also supported barriers that protect our most highly paid professionals,
such as doctors and dentists, from foreign competition. They apparently believed that these professionals
lack the skills necessary to compete in the global economy and therefore must be protected from the
international competition. The result is that the rest of us pay close to $100 billion more each
year for our medical bills ($700 per family).
U.S. Breaks With Allies Over Trade Issues Amid Trump's 'America First' Vows
By JACK EWING
Trump administration officials at a Group of 20 summit rejected concerns about spreading
protectionism and made clear that the new administration would seek different approaches to
global commerce.
Financial officials from the world's biggest economies have dropped from a joint statement
any mention of financing action on climate change, reportedly following pressure from the US
and Saudi Arabia....
The United States influence over
the Group of 20 nations, even when the US is supposedly taking generally unpopular stances
is striking and makes me wonder why there is no open dissent. What is supposed to be unpopular
may be less so among G20 governments than commonly assumed.
It has long been a mystery to
me why European nations adopt policies that hurt their economies just to pander to the whims
of US geopolitics. Cases in point: sanctions on Iran and Russia and support for Israel.
Does Immigration Help The Economy? Trump Administration To
Reopen H-1B Visa Program
By Lydia O'Neal @LydsONeal On 03/15/17 AT 4:30 PM
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
announced Wednesday that it would not draw down the number of
H-1B visas doled out to foreign workers for fiscal year 2018,
leaving the total cap at 85,000, and would begin accepting
applications April 3.
The decision came less than two weeks after USCIS alarmed
proponents of freer immigration for skilled workers when it
suspended the premium processing route for H-1B visas, which
allows companies to import workers quickly with just 15
waiting days and a $1,225 fee, for a period of at least six
months.
The agency attributed the decision to its need to "process
long-pending petitions, which we have currently been unable
to process due to the high volume of incoming petitions and
the significant surge in premium processing requests over the
past few years," according to a USCIS press release. USCIS
also kept its expedited processing route, which is reserved
for emergency situations, in place.
H-1B visas are reserved for foreign nationals with a clear
relationship with the American company seeking to hire them,
as well as a bachelor's degree or higher in a "specialty
occupation," defined by USCIS as "in fields such as
engineering, math and business, as well as many technology
fields."
H-1B Visa Petitions Approved in 2014 by Level of Education
Showing petitions approved in the 2014 fiscal year by
level of education. Approved petitions exceed the number of
individual H-1B workers sponsored because multiple types of
petitions can be filed for a single worker. The U.S. caps the
number of H-1B workers that can be given a visa at 65,000 per
fiscal year.
The tech industry often cites the program, which primarily
benefits Indian workers and companies, as a necessary tool to
compensate for labor shortages, but the existence of that
shortage has long been disputed.
A recent study found that, had the program not been in
place between 1994 and 2001, tech workers' salaries would've
been up to 5 percent higher, while their employment would've
grown by up to 11 percent. The paper, by researchers at the
University of Michigan and the University of California, San
Diego, also pointed out that productivity in the sector rose
by as much as 2.5 percent, while consumer prices fell,
ultimately benefitting information technology firms.
Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the
Question of Apartheid: Palestine and the Israeli Occupation
By United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western
Asia
Executive Summary
This report concludes that Israel has established an
apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a
whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the
authors of the report conclude that available evidence
establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty
of policies and practices that constitute the crime of
apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international
law.
The analysis in this report rests on the same body of
international human rights law and principles that reject
anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies,
including: the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies for its
definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the
International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of
the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereinafter the Apartheid
Convention):
The term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include
similar policies and practices of racial segregation and
discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply
to inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing
and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons
over any other racial group of persons and systematically
oppressing them.
Although the term "apartheid" was originally associated
with the specific instance of South Africa, it now represents
a species of crime against humanity under customary
international law and the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court, according to which:
"The crime of apartheid" means inhumane acts committed in
the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic
oppression and domination by one racial group over any other
racial group or groups and committed with the intention of
maintaining that regime.
Against that background, this report reflects the expert
consensus that the prohibition of apartheid is universally
applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of
apartheid in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).
The legal approach to the matter of apartheid adopted by
this report should not be confused with usage of the term in
popular discourse as an expression of opprobrium. Seeing
apartheid as discrete acts and practices (such as the
"apartheid wall"), a phenomenon generated by anonymous
structural conditions like capitalism ("economic apartheid"),
or private social behaviour on the part of certain racial
groups towards others (social racism) may have its place in
certain contexts. However, this report anchors its definition
of apartheid in international law, which carries with it
responsibilities for States, as specified in international
instruments.
The choice of evidence is guided by the Apartheid
Convention, which sets forth that the crime of apartheid
consists of discrete inhuman acts, but that such acts acquire
the status of crimes against humanity only if they
intentionally serve the core purpose of racial domination.
The Rome Statute specifies in its definition the presence of
an "institutionalized regime" serving the "intention" of
racial domination. Since "purpose" and "intention" lie at the
core of both definitions, this report examines factors
ostensibly separate from the Palestinian dimension -
especially, the doctrine of Jewish statehood as expressed in
law and the design of Israeli State institutions - to
establish beyond doubt the presence of such a core purpose.
That the Israeli regime is designed for this core purpose
was found to be evident in the body of laws, only some of
which are discussed in the report for reasons of scope. One
prominent example is land policy. The Israeli Basic Law
(Constitution) mandates that land held by the State of
Israel, the Israeli Development Authority or the Jewish
National Fund shall not be transferred in any manner, placing
its management permanently under their authority. The State
Property Law of 1951 provides for the reversion of property
(including land) to the State in any area "in which the law
of the State of Israel applies". The Israel Lands Authority
(ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of
the land within the internationally recognized borders of
Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership
by non-Jews. Those laws reflect the concept of "public
purpose" as expressed in the Basic Law. Such laws may be
changed by Knesset vote, but the Basic Law: Knesset prohibits
any political party from challenging that public purpose.
Effectively, Israeli law renders opposition to racial
domination illegal.
Demographic engineering is another area of policy serving
the purpose of maintaining Israel as a Jewish State. Most
well known is Israeli law conferring on Jews worldwide the
right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship
regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not
they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding
any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with
documented ancestral homes in the country. The World Zionist
Organization and Jewish Agency are vested with legal
authority as agencies of the State of Israel to facilitate
Jewish immigration and preferentially serve the interests of
Jewish citizens in matters ranging from land use to public
development planning and other matters deemed vital to Jewish
statehood. Some laws involving demographic engineering are
expressed in coded language, such as those that allow Jewish
councils to reject applications for residence from
Palestinian citizens. Israeli law normally allows spouses of
Israeli citizens to relocate to Israel but uniquely prohibits
this option in the case of Palestinians from the occupied
territory or beyond. On a far larger scale, it is a matter of
Israeli policy to reject the return of any Palestinian
refugees and exiles (totalling some six million people) to
territory under Israeli control.
Two additional attributes of a systematic regime of racial
domination must be present to qualify the regime as an
instance of apartheid. The first involves the identification
of the oppressed persons as belonging to a specific "racial
group". This report accepts the definition of the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination of "racial discrimination" as "any
distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on
race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has
the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of
human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political,
economic, social, cultural or any other field of public
life". On that basis, this report argues that in the
geopolitical context of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians can
be considered "racial groups". Furthermore, the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination is cited expressly in the Apartheid
Convention.
The second attribute is the boundary and character of the
group or groups involved. The status of the Palestinians as a
people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination
has been legally settled, most authoritatively by the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2004 advisory
opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On that basis, the
report examines the treatment by Israel of the Palestinian
people as a whole, considering the distinct circumstances of
geographic and juridical fragmentation of the Palestinian
people as a condition imposed by Israel. (Annex II addresses
the issue of a proper identification of the "country"
responsible for the denial of Palestinian rights under
international law.)
This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the
Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel
imposes an apartheid regime. It first examines how the
history of war, partition, de jure and de facto annexation
and prolonged occupation in Palestine has led to the
Palestinian people being divided into different geographic
regions administered by distinct sets of law. This
fragmentation operates to stabilize the Israeli regime of
racial domination over the Palestinians and to weaken the
will and capacity of the Palestinian people to mount a
unified and effective resistance. Different methods are
deployed depending on where Palestinians live. This is the
core means by which Israel enforces apartheid and at the same
time impedes international recognition of how the system
works as a complementary whole to comprise an apartheid
regime.
Since 1967, Palestinians as a people have lived in what
the report refers to as four "domains", in which the
fragments of the Palestinian population are ostensibly
treated differently but share in common the racial oppression
that results from the apartheid regime. Those domains are:
1. Civil law, with special restrictions, governing
Palestinians who live as citizens of Israel;
2. Permanent residency law governing Palestinians living
in the city of Jerusalem;
3. Military law governing Palestinians, including those in
refugee camps, living since 1967 under conditions of
belligerent occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
4. Policy to preclude the return of Palestinians, whether
refugees or exiles, living outside territory under Israel's
control....
The proposal from the State Department would reverse a
decision made late in the Obama administration to suspend the
sale of precision guided munitions to Riyadh, which leads a
mostly Arab coalition conducting air strikes against
Iran-backed Al Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's approval this week of the
measure, which officials say needs White House backing to go
into effect, provides an early indication of the new
administration's more Saudi-friendly approach to the conflict
in Yemen, and a sign of its more hawkish stance on Iran.
It also signals a break with the more conservative approach
of Obama's administration about US involvement in the
conflict.
The move takes place as the Trump administration considers
its approach to the Yemeni war, which has pitted US and
Saudi-backed Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi against
an alliance of ousted Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh and
Al Houthi rebels.
...a winning strategy so far. 15 years into the GWOT, the
only light at the end of the tunnel is generated by IEDs.
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern
Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer
By Dean Baker
The Old Technology and Inequality Scam: The Story of
Patents and Copyrights
One of the amazing lines often repeated by people in
policy debates is that, as a result of technology, we are
seeing income redistributed from people who work for a living
to the people who own the technology. While the
redistribution part of the story may be mostly true, the
problem is that the technology does not determine who "owns"
the technology. The people who write the laws determine who
owns the technology.
Specifically, patents and copyrights give their holders
monopolies on technology or creative work for their duration.
If we are concerned that money is going from ordinary workers
to people who hold patents and copyrights, then one policy we
may want to consider is shortening and weakening these
monopolies. But policy has gone sharply in the opposite
direction over the last four decades, as a wide variety of
measures have been put into law that make these protections
longer and stronger. Thus, the redistribution from people who
work to people who own the technology should not be
surprising - that was the purpose of the policy.
If stronger rules on patents and copyrights produced
economic dividends in the form of more innovation and more
creative output, then this upward redistribution might be
justified. But the evidence doesn't indicate there has been
any noticeable growth dividend associated with this upward
redistribution. In fact, stronger patent protection seems to
be associated with slower growth.
Before directly considering the case, it is worth thinking
for a minute about what the world might look like if we had
alternative mechanisms to patents and copyrights, so that the
items now subject to these monopolies could be sold in a free
market just like paper cups and shovels.
The biggest impact would be in prescription drugs. The
breakthrough drugs for cancer, hepatitis C, and other
diseases, which now sell for tens or hundreds of thousands of
dollars annually, would instead sell for a few hundred
dollars. No one would have to struggle to get their insurer
to pay for drugs or scrape together the money from friends
and family. Almost every drug would be well within an
affordable price range for a middle-class family, and
covering the cost for poorer families could be easily managed
by governments and aid agencies.
The same would be the case with various medical tests and
treatments. Doctors would not have to struggle with a
decision about whether to prescribe an expensive scan, which
might be the best way to detect a cancerous growth or other
health issue, or to rely on cheaper but less reliable
technology. In the absence of patent protection even the most
cutting edge scans would be reasonably priced.
Health care is not the only area that would be transformed
by a free market in technology and creative work. Imagine
that all the textbooks needed by college students could be
downloaded at no cost over the web and printed out for the
price of the paper. Suppose that a vast amount of new books,
recorded music, and movies was freely available on the web.
People or companies who create and innovate deserve to be
compensated, but there is little reason to believe that the
current system of patent and copyright monopolies is the best
way to support their work. It's not surprising that the
people who benefit from the current system are reluctant to
have the efficiency of patents and copyrights become a topic
for public debate, but those who are serious about inequality
have no choice. These forms of property claims have been
important drivers of inequality in the last four decades.
The explicit assumption behind the steps over the last
four decades to increase the strength and duration of patent
and copyright protection is that the higher prices resulting
from increased protection will be more than offset by an
increased incentive for innovation and creative work. Patent
and copyright protection should be understood as being like
very large tariffs. These protections can often the raise the
price of protected items by several multiples of the free
market price, making them comparable to tariffs of several
hundred or even several thousand percent. The resulting
economic distortions are comparable to what they would be if
we imposed tariffs of this magnitude.
The justification for granting these monopoly protections
is that the increased innovation and creative work that is
produced as a result of these incentives exceeds the economic
costs from patent and copyright monopolies. However, there is
remarkably little evidence to support this assumption. While
the cost of patent and copyright protection in higher prices
is apparent, even if not well-measured, there is little
evidence of a substantial payoff in the form of a more rapid
pace of innovation or more and better creative work....
In the GE Aviation
lobby, as Indiana
Governor Holcomb
rocked slightly in
custom-made cowboy
boots – black, pointed
toes, an outline of
Indiana on the front
of the shaft – and the
sound of the ignition
of his SUV signaling
the end of a Wednesday
afternoon at the GE
plant, Plant Manager
Matteson added one
more thing:
Immigration reform
would really help on a
number of fronts,
starting with clearing
the way for the talent
pool coming out of
Indiana Universities
and other engineering
schools.
This is the
new manufacturing that
is replacing the
factories being
shuttered. They are
run by engineers, many
of them foreign. They
hire workers who they
will train and workers
must be capable of
learning and fitting
in with the work
culture. Manufacturing
is locating in urban
areas and near
Universities where
they can find a pool
of high skill talent
and a workforce that
is accustomed to
diversity. They will
NOT go to a redneck
sundown town where the
Indian engineers are
going to be harassed
and maybe shot. The
Sundown towns are
chasing away the very
people they need to
save their
communities. The
denigrate education
and fail to teach
their children the
math skills they would
need to become high
skill engineering
talent. Low skill jobs
cannot have high pay
without unions. These
voters have voted for
politicians who have
destroyed their unions
with Right to Work
laws and other bad
policy.
They are egged on
by Trump who
understands none of
this and promises to
return their low skill
jobs. The GOP and
Trump blame trade and
immigrants, pushing
the cultural buttons
to deflect attention
to their complicity in
destroying unions,
underfunding education
and failure to invest
in the workforce
Yep. There is certainly a roach motel policy aspect to
globalization. Dependencies upon existing supply chains both
for wage and regulatory arbitrage pricing and for invested
fixed capital stock impose yuuge drags on on-shoring efforts.
The poverty economics from 40 acres and mule all the way to
single parent eligibility requirements and subsequent
"reforms" for family financial aid were also roach motel
economics. Now we have the irony of the sharing economy
further suppressing wages.
Thought-provoking, wide-ranging blog post by Jared* on
international trade. I guess PGL only had time to read Timmy
Taylor in his rush to post first.
He disagrees with
Navarro** about trade deficits always being a problem and
notes that there are two sides or aspects to the equation.
"As long as the world's excess global savings continue to
flow to our shores, our trade deficit will persist, and going
after bilateral deficits one at a time becomes a game of
whack-a-mole that we can't win."
Jared notes how Brad Setser suggests a solution: "As Brad
Setser convincingly argues, encouraging countries with large
surpluses (which must show up as deficits somewhere else) to
engage in more internal investment is a far preferable way to
reduce our own imbalances than tariffs and trade barriers."
Too bad we don't have a WTO that could force surplus
nations like Germany and China to do this.
But Jared admits Navarro isn't always wrong (something PGL
can't bring himself to do given his hateful nature.)
"Second, Navarro is not wrong to worry about the drag on
demand from negative net exports, but only when there's
nothing in the pipeline to offset it. The Federal Reserve can
lower interest rates to offset the drag, but not if they're
near zero, or in "normalization" mode (raising rates), both
of which are operative today. Fiscal policy can pick up the
slack, but not if Congress refuses to step up.
So yeah, today's trade deficits are a problem. They've not
been large enough to keep the economy from growing and
unemployment from falling, but remember, it's year eight of
an economic expansion and we've still not fully closed the
GDP output gap (and that's even the case as potential GDP has
been lowered). In the absence of offsets, we could have used
that extra demand."
This is what the neoliberals like PGL and Sanjait don't
understand or can't admit. Why? Because of politics and how
Democrats like Bill Clinton and Obama pushed corporate free
trade deals and trade policy. Because critics like Navarro
and Bernie Sanders have struck a cord with populist voters
concerned about corporate trade.
Jared Bernstein wraps up with a plea for infrastructure
spending given the threat of the SecStags.
"But given the existential threat of climate change, or
for that matter, the general state of our public goods, I
find it awfully hard to accept the contention that there's
nothing productive in which to invest the excess savings
surplus countries continue to send our way."
Compare with Hillary' modest fiscal action which Alan
Blinder said wouldn't effect the Fed's reaction function.
DeLong still backed her over Sanders despite the threat of
the Secstags. Critics of Fed policy like Sanjait and PGL
still backed Hillary even though she had no criticisms of the
Fed or plans to reform its policy.
* like PGL, I pretend to know the write to give myself the
appearance more authority.
** PGL's bete noir.
Flynn definitely was compromised deliberately, because he just spoke with Russian ambassador as a private person (but may be on
instructions from Trump) and then understanding that lied to the vice president. So releasing his conversations was a part "color revolution"
against Trump, launched by neocons in intelligence services. As for the role of Jews in this affair is is naive to consider neocons
to be purely ethnically based, although "Israel firster" are an important part of them. So in Fred C. Dobbs post below one needs
to replace "Jew" with "Neocon" in Nixon's remarks. You will instantly see the point and it is difficlut nt to agree with Nixon that
neocons influence is huge threat to the USA. In this sense Nixon proved again that his was very talented, pretty shred politician...
Notable quotes:
"... Looks like "Color revolution" came to the USA and you being the US citizen better to learn what it means. And it means a lot (among other things that means an immediate end of remnants of democracy left; Welcome to the USSR, in other words.) ..."
"... Tom Clancy eat your heart out, this is as real as Dennis Kucinitch describes it as. The sinister globalist elite will stop at nothing in establishing their Luciferian dreams of the Novus Ordo Seclorum (New World Order). ..."
"... The old Elites need conflicts, so they can keep power. ..."
"... Yep. Trillion dollar military industrial complex is a lot of motivation for the establishment to revive the cold war and to keep the IC involved in the Saudi's proxy war via ISIS in the middle east. The CIA isn't interested in peace. It wants power. ..."
"... Yes, that appears to be their Operandi--to not only keep us distracted and our resources drained to continually feed their purses and purposes (to confiscate more wealth and usurp more power)...so, now that we are aware of this what are we doing to do to put a stop to it since we are Sovereign, and supposed to be in charge (self-governing). It appears we have not been taking our responsibility seriously and trusting our "servants" whilst they have been plotting and scheming against us. ..."
"... Trump is the last, best hope to disband the US' neolib version of the Gestapo ..."
"... if Clinton won there would never be a political opponent free from her deep state surveillance ..."
"... ... "The Jews are all over the government," Nixon complained to his chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, in an Oval Office meeting recorded on one of a set of White House tapes released yesterday at the National Archives. Nixon said the Jews needed to be brought under control by putting someone "in charge who is not Jewish" in key agencies. ..."
"... Washington "is full of Jews," the president asserted. "Most Jews are disloyal." He made exceptions for some of his top aides, such as national security adviser Henry Kissinger, his White House counsel, Leonard Garment, and one of his speechwriters, William Safire, and then added: ..."
"... "But, Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right? ..."
"... The fact the nation's now-departed senior guardian of national security was unmoored by a scandal linked to a conversation picked up on a wire offers a rare insight into how exactly America's vaunted Deep State works. It is a story not about rogue intelligence agencies running amok outside the law, but rather about the vast domestic power they have managed to acquire within it. ..."
"... We know now that the FBI and the NSA, under their Executive Order 12333 authority and using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as statutory cover, were actively monitoring the phone calls and reading text messages sent to and from the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. ..."
"... Although the monitoring of any specific individual is classified TOP SECRET, and cannot be released to foreigners, the existence of this monitoring in general is something of an open secret, and Kislyak probably suspected he was under surveillance. ..."
"... The way it's supposed to work is that any time a "U.S. person" - government speak for a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, even a U.S. company, located here or abroad - finds his or her communications caught up in Kislyak's, the entire surveillance empire, which was designed for speed and efficiency, and which, we now know, is hard to manage, grinds to a halt. That's a good thing. Even before Snowden, of course, the FBI would "minimize" the U.S. end of a conversation if analysts determined that the calls had no relevance to a legitimate intelligence gathering purpose. A late night call to order pizza would fall into this category. ..."
"... But if the analyst listening to Kislyak's call hears someone identify himself as an agent of the U.S. government - "Hi! It's Mike Flynn" certainly qualifies - a number of things have to happen, according to the government's own rules ..."
"... At this stage, the actual audio of the call and any transcript would be considered "Raw FISA-acquired information," and its distribution would be highly restricted. At the NSA, not more than 40 or so analysts or senior managers would be read into the classification sub-sub compartment that contains it, called RAGTIME-A,B,C D or P, where each letter stands for one of five different categories of foreign intelligence. ..."
Is this Intel community trying to undermine Trump's presidency? If so congratulations ask yourself if are living in a modern incarnation
of a police state. Intelligence agencies as a pinnacle of political power == police state.
The swamp lost part of the power and fights back.
Looks like "Color revolution" came to the USA and you being the US citizen better to learn what it means. And it means
a lot (among other things that means an immediate end of remnants of democracy left; Welcome to the USSR, in other words.)
All standard tricks used to depose governments like Yanukovych in Ukraine are now played against Trump. Media dominance is
one essential part. Coordinated series of leaks is a standard scenarios.
Former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on Gen. Michael Flynn resigning as President Trump's National Security Advisor and the
divide between the intelligence community and Trump.
"Who knows what is truth anymore. It's like a version of Mad magazine". -- Kusinich
All standard tricks used to depose governments like Yanukovych in Ukraine are now played against Trump.
Media dominance and hostility of media to the government is one essential part of any color revolution. That's what we have
now in the USA. Here is Kucinich warning:
Tom Clancy eat your heart out, this is as real as Dennis Kucinitch describes it as. The sinister globalist elite will
stop at nothing in establishing their Luciferian dreams of the Novus Ordo Seclorum (New World Order). Death to the Globalist/Islamic/Leftist
alliance. Deus Vult!
Mike V
In 2009, the Haitian parliament voted unanimously to raise the minimum wage, up to 61 cents per hour. US-based multinational
textile corporations such as Hanes and Levi's objected, claiming that paying these workers slightly more would cut into their
profits. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton intervened and pressured Haiti to back off - blocking the raise. We only know
about this from WikiLeaks.
How on Earth is that something a communist would do? Communists want workers to unite and fire their bosses. Communists
want the workers to run the factories. How on God's green Earth does a Communist - who wants the workers to directly control
the means of production - intervene to block a tiny wage increase for those same workers.
Calling corporate Democrats like Clinton and Obama "communist" and "socialist" is so mindbogglingly stupid that I don't
even know how to respond to someone so blinded by partisanship.
Gg Mo
See: The Young Hegelians . CRONY Totalitarian "Communism" is the Goal, and the Minions are screaming for it , in their estrogen
soaked , Marxist indoctrinated IDIOCY.
IT WIZARD
Trump needs to drain the swamp on the Intel community
Joe
The old Elites need conflicts, so they can keep power.
sequorroxx
Yep. Trillion dollar military industrial complex is a lot of motivation for the establishment to revive the cold war
and to keep the IC involved in the Saudi's proxy war via ISIS in the middle east. The CIA isn't interested in peace. It wants
power.
Trisha Holmeide
Yes, that appears to be their Operandi--to not only keep us distracted and our resources drained to continually feed
their purses and purposes (to confiscate more wealth and usurp more power)...so, now that we are aware of this what are we
doing to do to put a stop to it since we are Sovereign, and supposed to be in charge (self-governing). It appears we have not
been taking our responsibility seriously and trusting our "servants" whilst they have been plotting and scheming against us.
Trump is the last, best hope to disband the US' neolib version of the Gestapo. As the Japanese Imperial Army noted, never
invade America there would be a "rifle behind every blade of grass"
In Nixon's day, the Deep State was all about 'Jews in the Guv'mint'. Not gonna happen on Trump's watch, not yet anyway, so that's
something. Now, it's 'Progressives', presumably. Call them NeoLiberals if you like.
... "The Jews are all over the government," Nixon complained to his chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, in an Oval
Office meeting recorded on one of a set of White House tapes released yesterday at the National Archives. Nixon said the Jews
needed to be brought under control by putting someone "in charge who is not Jewish" in key agencies.
Washington "is full of Jews," the president asserted. "Most Jews are disloyal." He made exceptions for some of his top
aides, such as national security adviser Henry Kissinger, his White House counsel, Leonard Garment, and one of his speechwriters,
William Safire, and then added:
"But, Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?"
Haldeman agreed wholeheartedly. "Their whole orientation is against you. In this administration, anyway. And they are smart.
They have the ability to do what they want to do--which is to hurt us." ...
The who, what, where, and why of the Trump administration's first major scandal - Michael Flynn's ignominious resignation on
Monday as national security advisor - have all been thoroughly discussed. Relatively neglected, and deserving of far more attention,
has been the how.
The fact the nation's now-departed senior guardian of national security was unmoored by a scandal linked to a conversation
picked up on a wire offers a rare insight into how exactly America's vaunted Deep State works. It is a story not about rogue intelligence
agencies running amok outside the law, but rather about the vast domestic power they have managed to acquire within it.
We know now that the FBI and the NSA, under their Executive Order 12333 authority and using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act as statutory cover, were actively monitoring the phone calls and reading text messages sent to and from the Russian ambassador
to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.
Although the monitoring of any specific individual is classified TOP SECRET, and cannot be released to foreigners, the
existence of this monitoring in general is something of an open secret, and Kislyak probably suspected he was under surveillance.
But a welter of laws, many of them tweaked after the Snowden revelations, govern the distribution of any information that is
acquired by such surveillance. And this is where it's highly relevant that this scandal was started by the public leaking of information
about Mike Flynn's involvement in the monitoring of Kisylak.
The way it's supposed to work is that any time a "U.S. person" - government speak for a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent
resident, even a U.S. company, located here or abroad - finds his or her communications caught up in Kislyak's, the entire surveillance
empire, which was designed for speed and efficiency, and which, we now know, is hard to manage, grinds to a halt. That's a good
thing. Even before Snowden, of course, the FBI would "minimize" the U.S. end of a conversation if analysts determined that the
calls had no relevance to a legitimate intelligence gathering purpose. A late night call to order pizza would fall into this category.
But if the analyst listening to Kislyak's call hears someone identify himself as an agent of the U.S. government - "Hi!
It's Mike Flynn" certainly qualifies - a number of things have to happen, according to the government's own rules
At this stage, the actual audio of the call and any transcript would be considered "Raw FISA-acquired information," and
its distribution would be highly restricted. At the NSA, not more than 40 or so analysts or senior managers would be read into
the classification sub-sub compartment that contains it, called RAGTIME-A,B,C D or P, where each letter stands for one of five
different categories of foreign intelligence.
For anything out of the ordinary - and, again, Flynn's status qualifies - the head of the National Security Division would
be notified, and he or she would bring the raw FISA transcript to FBI Director James Comey or his deputy. Then, the director and
his deputy would determine whether to keep the part of the communication that contained Flynn's words. The NSA has its own procedures
for determining whether to destroy or retain the U.S. half of an intercepted communication.
In this case, there were three sets of communications between Flynn and Kislyak, at least one of which is a text message. The
first occurs on Dec. 18. The last occurs on Dec. 30, a day after sanctions were levied against people that the Russian ambassador
knew - namely, spies posing as diplomats.
The factors FBI Director Comey and his deputy would have had to consider in this case are complex. Flynn was a former senior
intelligence official not in power at the time of the communications, though he did have an interim security clearance. Then there
was the policy context: The United States wanted to know why Russia decided not to retaliate, according to the Washington Post.
(Justice Department warned White House that
Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail,
officials say https://wpo.st/fthc2 Feb 13)
But the most important factor would have been that Flynn was talking to the ambassador of a country who has been credibly accused
of interfering in the election of his boss. Regardless of the content of Flynn's side of the call, it would be negligent if the
FBI decided to minimize, or ignore, these calls, simply because Flynn is a citizen who is not subject to surveillance himself.
But what Flynn said in the calls would have played a role in the FBI's determination to keep the transcripts unminimized - a fancy
way of saying "unredacted."
The Justice Department would then decide whether to pursue the matter further. If they thought Flynn was acting as an agent
of a foreign government - and there's not a gram of evidence for this - they could apply for a normal surveillance warrant under
Title III of the U.S. code.
It is rare for the FBI or NSA to distribute raw, unminimized FISA material outside of controlled channels. But given the intelligence
questions at stake, they would have had an obligation to circulate the Flynn transcripts to the National Security Council, which,
during most of January, was peopled with President Obama's staff and detailees from other government agencies.
Sometime before January 12, the fact that these conversations had occurred was disclosed to David Ignatius, who wrote about
them. That day, Sean Spicer asked Flynn about them. Flynn denied that the sanctions were discussed. A few days later, on January
16, Vice President Mike Pence repeated Flynn's assurances to him that the calls were mostly about the logistics of arranging further
calls when Trump was President.
At this moment, we are four days away from Trump's inauguration. The FBI agents and analysts who monitored the calls, as well
as some NSC officials in the Obama administration, along with a few senior Justice Department attorneys, all knew with certainty
that the content of the calls contradicted Flynn's account of them. The transcript of the Dec. 30 call proved as much.
For reasons unclear to us, the FBI director, James Comey, did not believe that Flynn's misrepresentations amounted to a sufficient
national security risk on January 16 to spring FBI investigators on the Trump team, or even on Flynn. Perhaps he felt that doing
so right before the inauguration would have been too unseemly.
But he did want to know more. In an extraordinary turn, agents were sent to the White House to interview Flynn just a few days
after Trump was sworn in, according to the New York Times. We don't know what they learned. But by January 26, Comey had dropped
his objections to notifying the White House. (In the interim, Sean Spicer was asked about the calls again, and repeated the Flynn
untruth.)
Acting attorney general Sally Yates informed the White House counsel, Don McGahn, that their account of what Flynn said did
not match what Flynn insisted he said.
McGahn had the clearance to see the transcript, but it's fair to assume that many members of Trump's team probably did not.
But that does not explain why it took 11 days for Vice President Pence, who certainly did have such clearance, to learn about
the Justice Department warning. And it does not explain what the White House was doing as it mulled over this information for
weeks.
Here we have to leave the realm of reasonable conjecture, but the best explanation might be the easiest: incompetence or ineffectiveness
from the White House counsel and an inability to foresee the real world consequences of their own decisions by White House principals.
The country's intelligence agencies, by contrast, were far more clear-sighted in the use of their prerogatives and power.
Washington Post Lies to Readers Again: Job Loss in
Manufacturing Due to Trade, not Automation
The Washington Post must think that U.S. trade policy
is really awful. Why else would they continually lie to
their readers * and claim that the cause of the sharp job
loss in manufacturing in recent years was automation?
For fans of data rather than myths, the basic story is
that manufacturing has been declining as a share of total
employment since 1970. However there was relatively little
change in the number of jobs until the trade deficit
exploded in the last decade. Here's the graph.
[Manufacturing Employment, 1970-2017]
And, there was no great uptick in productivity **
coinciding with the plunge in employment at the start of
the last decade. It would be nice if the Washington Post
could discuss trade honestly. This sort of reporting gives
fuel to the Donald Trumps of the world.
In this context it is probably worth once again
mentioning that the Washington Post still refuses to
correct its pro-NAFTA editorial in which it made the
absurd claim *** that Mexico's GDP quadrupled from 1987 to
2007. The actual figure was 83 percent, according to the
International Monetary Fund.
"... He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated" anti-neoliberal sentiments. ..."
"... And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals: ..."
"... Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism ..."
"... Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization itself. ..."
"... "And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place," ..."
"... This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980. So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at ..."
The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president. What would motivate
many people to go out for weekend rallies now?
libezkova -> cm... , -1
"The important mission has been accomplished - Trump has become president."
You are absolutely wrong. Mission is not accomplished. It is not even started.
Trump IMHO was just a symbol of resistance against neoliberalism that is growing in the USA.
He was elected not for his personal qualities, but despite them, as a symbol of anti-neoliberal
movement. As the only candidate that intuitively felt the need for the new policy due to crisis
of neoliberalism ("secular stagnation" to be exact) impoverishment of lower 80% and "appropriated"
anti-neoliberal sentiments.
And he is expected to accomplish at least two goals:
Stop the wars of expansion of neoliberal empire fought by previous administration. Achieve
détente with Russia as Russia is more ally then foe in the current international situation and
hostility engineered by Obama administration was based on Russia resistance to neoliberalism
(despite
being neoliberal country with neoliberal President -- Putin is probably somewhat similar to Trump
"bastard neoliberal" a strange mixture of neoliberal in domestic politics with "economic nationalist"
on international arena that rejects neoliberal globalization, on term favorable to multinational
corporations).
Reverse or at least stem destruction of jobs and the standard of living of lower 80% on
Americans due to globalization and, possibly, slow down or reverse the process of globalization
itself.
The problem is there is extremely powerful and influential "fifth column" of globalization
within the country and they can't allow Trump to go this path. As Senator Dick Durbin said about
banks and the US Congress
== quote ==
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has been battling the banks the last few weeks in an effort to
get 60 votes lined up for bankruptcy reform. He's losing.
On Monday night in an interview with a radio host back home, he came to a stark conclusion:
the banks own the Senate.
"And the banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many
of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly
own the place,"
== end of the quote ==
This is anathema for neoliberalism and it is neoliberals who ruled the country since 1980.
So it is not surprising that they now are trying to stage a color revolution in the USA to
return to power. See also pretty interesting analysis at
"... The two thinkers, recently in the news thanks to Steve Bannon, had different views on human nature. ..."
"... if human nature is universal, cultural convergence seems to be the logical outcome of a globalized world. ..."
"... Spengler's views can be seen in the context of a movement known as historicism, the idea that human societies were the products of historical and material circumstances, which arose as a result of the universalism propagated by the Enlightenment and spread by the French Revolution. While Spengler makes some valid points, particularly in arguing against the idea that history is goal-oriented and directional, his view denies the very concept of empathy, that one can look at, say, Caesar, and see things through his eyes. ..."
"... In other words, Evola believed that there was a common core to human beings, a set of higher principles and heroic "traditional" values that lay at the root of every successful civilization. Even when eclipsed, these values remained in a dormant form, waiting to be reactivated. It is not surprising, then, that Evola is popular among nationalists and reactionaries today, because his framework allows for a shared nationalistic struggle that is simultaneously individualistic and universal in the chivalric sense that true warriors always recognize and respect each other even when serving different causes. ..."
"... The problem is that the mere existence of human nature is no guarantee of its consummation. Human beings may live pathetic or ignoble or fragmentary lives. Evola's concern (whatever one might think of it) was with encouraging the perfection of human nature through political means. That perfection may have little to do with the commonest "material, psychological, and emotional factors"; indeed, it most certainly requires their overcoming. ..."
"... This is important, because it forms one of the strongest critiques that the far right brings against democratic republics: namely, that they are materialistic and emotionally hollow; that they provide no transcendental or ennobling vision of the life of human beings and the destiny of societies. ..."
The two thinkers, recently in the news thanks to Steve Bannon, had different views on human
nature.
The apocalyptic worldview promoted by prominent political figures such as Steve Bannon in the United
States and Aleksandr Dugin in Russia is premised on the notion that ordinary political and legislative
battles are more than just quibbles over contemporary issues. Rather, political debates are
fronts in a greater battle of ideas , and everything is a struggle for the meaning of civilization
and human nature. Bannon's worldview is preceded by the thought of two early-20th-century thinkers,
Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola-and his passing mention of the latter in a 2014 speech has caused
some controversy in recent weeks, including a New York Times article entitled
"Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists."
These thinkers wrote at a time when the Western narrative of progress and improvement was shattered
after World War I. Interest in both Spengler and Evola has recently revived, though Spengler was
always fairly well-known for his thesis that civilizations grew and declined in a cyclical fashion.
Although both Spengler and Evola shared a pessimism over the direction of modern Western civilization,
they differed on human nature. Is there a way to reconcile two vastly different observations?
The first is that people in different eras and locales display a remarkable degree of behavioral
similarity; id est , human nature is universal and constant. However, on the other hand, the
peculiarities and differences between some cultures are so great that it is hard to see how these
are derived from a common source. This question is really what lies at the root of the current argument
between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. For if human nature is universal, cultural convergence
seems to be the logical outcome of a globalized world.
Are there alternatives? Building off of ideas introduced in the early 19th century by Hegel, Spengler
argued that the very framework of human experience was limited by the time and the civilization
in which the person lived:
"Mankind" has no aim, no idea, no plan [and] is a zoological expression, or an empty word.
But conjure away the phantom, break the magic circle, and at once there emerges an astonishing
wealth of actual forms. I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can
be kept up only by shutting one's eyes to the overwhelming multitier of facts, the drama of a
number of mighty Cultures. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics,
but many, each in its deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and
self-contained.
Spengler's views can be seen in the context of a movement known as historicism, the idea that
human societies were the products of historical and material circumstances, which arose as a result
of the universalism propagated by the Enlightenment and spread by the French Revolution. While Spengler
makes some valid points, particularly in arguing against the idea that history is goal-oriented and
directional, his view denies the very concept of empathy, that one can look at, say, Caesar, and
see things through his eyes.
Age after age, people look back on history for inspiration, and it is hard to accept this lack
of commonality with historical figures: the idea of a common human nature is a compelling concept.
It also has the weight of historical, literary, and anthropological evidence behind it. But it does
not follow that the idea of a fixed human nature leads to a form of neoliberal universalism.
One alternative was provided by Evola, who sought to reclaim the idea of human nature from the
Enlightenment and reconcile it with the observations described by Spengler and Hegel. Instead of
the liberal, convergent universalism championed by the Enlightenment, Evola advocated a traditionalist
universalism, because "there is no form of traditional organization that does not hide a higher
principle." In an
argument that echoes Plato's Theory of Forms, he wrote:
The supreme values and the foundational principles of every healthy and normal institution
are not liable to change. In the domain of these values there is no "history" and to think about
them in historical terms is absurd even where these principles are objectified in a historical
reality, they are not at all conditioned by it; they always point to a higher, meta-historical
plane, which is their natural domain and where there is no change.
In other words, Evola believed that there was a common core to human beings, a set of higher
principles and heroic "traditional" values that lay at the root of every successful civilization.
Even when eclipsed, these values remained in a dormant form, waiting to be reactivated. It is not
surprising, then, that Evola is popular among nationalists and reactionaries today, because his framework
allows for a shared nationalistic struggle that is simultaneously individualistic and universal in
the chivalric sense that true warriors always recognize and respect each other even when serving
different causes.
... ... ...
Akhilesh Pillalamarri is an editorial assistant at The American Conservative . He also
writes for The National Interest and The Diplomat .
"But the truth is probably a lot simpler: people are motivated by similar and fixed material,
psychological, and emotional factors across time and space, not by any liberal or 'meta-historical'
purposes."
Yet it seems to me that everything depends on just who the "people" in question are,
and what their relation is to the wellsprings of power. The motivations of the American electorate
are not those of a Napoleon; and these motivations in turn are not identical to those those of,
say, the Venetian Doge in the Renaissance. The character of the very social order changes dramatically
on the basis of the motivations of its rulers.
The problem is that the mere existence of human nature is no guarantee of its consummation.
Human beings may live pathetic or ignoble or fragmentary lives. Evola's concern (whatever one
might think of it) was with encouraging the perfection of human nature through political means.
That perfection may have little to do with the commonest "material, psychological, and emotional
factors"; indeed, it most certainly requires their overcoming.
This is important, because it forms one of the strongest critiques that the far right brings
against democratic republics: namely, that they are materialistic and emotionally hollow; that
they provide no transcendental or ennobling vision of the life of human beings and the destiny
of societies.
Until democratic republics can answer that charge, which is a poetic, a spiritual, a philosophical
charge, they will remain vulnerable to the peril of "fascist revolt."
"... an unwillingness or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public conformism, ..."
"... he daringly points out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially American. ..."
"... The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism. ..."
"... The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities. ..."
"... The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as the invasion of Iraq. ..."
"... " The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis of political stupidity;" ..."
"... "One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward at a vanished and idealized national past; " ..."
"... " [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters..., as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever on American behavior and interests ;" ..."
"... I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do. ..."
... While there are incontestable civilizing elements to America's nationalism, there are
also dangerous and destructive ingredients, a sort of Hegelian thesis and antithesis theme
which places a strong question mark in America's historical theme of exceptionalism.
Unlike in other post-World War II nations, America's nationalism is permeated by values
and religious elements derived mostly from the South and the Southern Baptists, though the
fears and panics of the embittered heartland provide additional fuel.
Lieven's book, among other elements, is also a summation of lots of minor observations--even
personal ones he made as a student in the small town of Troy, Alabama--and historical details
which reflect the grand evolution of America's nationalism. When he says that "an unwillingness
or inability among Americans to question the country's sinlessness feeds a culture of public
conformism," then he has the support of Mark Twain who said something to the effect
that we are blessed with three things in this country, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience
and, thirdly, the common sense to practice neither one! Ditto when he daringly points
out America's "hypocrisy," which also is corroborated by other scholars, among them James Hillman
in his recent book "A Terrible Love of War" in which he characterizes hypocrisy as quintessentially
American.
Lieven continues with the impact of the Cold War on America's nationalism and then, having
always expanded the theme of Bush's foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, examines
with commendable perspective the complex and very much unadmitted current aspects of the U.S.'s
relationships with the Moslems, the Iraq War and the impact of the pro-Israeli lobby. It
is the sort of assessment one rarely finds in the U.S. media . He exposes the alienation
the U.S. caused among allies and, in particular, the Arabs and the EU.
Lieven wrote this book with passion and commendable sincerity. Though it comes from a foreigner,
its advice would without question serve not only America's interest but also provide a substantial
basis for a detached and objective approach to solving the intractable Israeli-Palestinian
conflict to the satisfaction of all involved before worse deeds and more burdens materialize.
Tom Munro:
What this book suggests is that a significant number of Americans have an outlook similar
to European countries around 1904. A sense of identification with an idea of nation and a dismissive
approach to other countries and cultures. Whilst in Europe the experience of the first
and second world wars put paid to nationalism in America it is going strong. In fact Europeans
see themselves less as Germans or Frenchmen today than they ever have.
The reason for American nationalism springs from a pride in American institutions but
it also contains a deep resentment that gives it its dynamism . Whilst America as a nation
has not lost a war there are a number of reasons for resentment. The South feels that its values
are not taken seriously and it is subject to ridicule by the seaboard states. Conservative
Christians are concerned about modernism. The combined resentments lead to a sort of chip
on the shoulder patriotism which so characterizes American nationalism.
Of course these things alone are not sufficient. Europeans live in countries that are small
geographically. They travel see other countries and are multilingual. Most Americans do not
travel and the education they do is strong in ideology and weak in history. It is thus easier
for some Americans to develop a rather simple minded view of the world.
The book suggests that the Republican Party is really like an old style European nationalist
party. Broadly serving the interests of the moneyed elite but spouting a form of populist
gobbledygook, which paints America as being in a life and death, struggle with anti-American
forces at home and abroad. It is the reason for Anne Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
That is the rhetoric of struggle acts as a cover for political policies that benefit a few
and lay the blame for the problems of ordinary Americans on fictitious entities.
The main side effects of the nationalism are the current policies which shackles America
to Israel uncritically despite what that country might and how its actions may isolate America
from the rest of the world. It also justifies America on foreign policy adventures such as
the invasion of Iraq.
The book is quite good and repeats the message of a number of other books such as "What
is wrong with America". Probably there is something to be said for the books central message.
Keith Wheelock (Skillman, NJ USA)
A Socratic 'America know thyself': READ IT!, August 13, 2010
Foreigners, from de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce to Hugh Brogan and The Economist's John Micklethwait
and Adrian Woodridge, often see America more clearly than do Americans. In the post-World War
II period, R. L. Bruckberger's IMAGES OF AMERICA (1958) and Jean -Jacques Servan-Schreiber's
THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE (1967) presented an uplifting picture of America.
Two generations later, Englishman Anatol Lieven paints a troubling picture of a country
that is a far cry from John Winthrop's' "city upon a hill."
Has America changed so profoundly over the past fifty years or is Mr. Lieven simply highlighting
historical cycles that, at least for the moment, had resulted in a near `perfect storm?' His
2004 book has prompted both praise [see Brian Urquhart's Extreme Makeover in the New York Review
of Books (February 24, 2005)] and brick bats. This book is not a polemic. Rather, it is a scholarly
analysis by a highly regarded author and former The Times (London) correspondent who has lived
in various American locales. He has a journalist's acquaintance of many prominent Americans
and his source materials are excellent.
I applaud his courage for exploring the dark cross currents in modern-day America. In the
tradition of the Delphic oracle and Socrates, he urges that Americans `know thy self.' The
picture he paints should cause thoughtful Americans to shudder. Personally, I found his
book of a genre similar to Cullen Murphy's ARE WE ROME? THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE AND THE FATE
OF AMERICA.
I do not consider Mr. Lieven anti-American in his extensive critique of American cross
currents. That he wrote this in the full flush of the Bush/Cheney post-9/11 era suggests that
he might temper some of his assessments after the course corrections of the Obama administration.
My sense is that Mr. Lieven admires many of America's core qualities and that this `tough love'
essay is his effort to guide Americans back to their more admirable qualities.
Mr. Lieven boldly sets forth his book's message in a broad-ranging introduction:
" The [U. S.] conduct of the war against terrorism looks more like a baroque apotheosis
of political stupidity;"
"Aspects of American nationalism imperil both the nation's global leadership and its
success in the struggle against Islamic terror and revolution;"
"Insofar as American nationalism has become mixed up with a chauvinist version of Israeli
nationalism, it also plays an absolutely disastrous role in U.S. relations with the Muslim
world and in fueling terrorism;"
"American imperialists trail America's coat across the whole world while most ordinary
Americans are not looking and rely on those same Americans to react with `don't tread on
me' nationalist fury when the coat is trodden on;"
"One strand of American nationalism is radical...because it continually looks backward
at a vanished and idealized national past; "
"America is the home of by far the most deep, widespread and conservative religious
belief in the Western world;"
"The relationship between the traditional White Protestant world on one hand and the
forces of American economic, demographic, social and cultural change on the other may be
compared to the genesis of a hurricane;"
"The religious Right has allied itself solidly with extreme free market forces in the
Republican Party although it is precisely the workings of unrestricted American capitalism
which are eroding the world the religious conservatives wish to defend;"
"American nationalism is beginning to conflict very seriously with any enlightened,
viable or even rational version of American imperialism;"
" [George W.] Bush, his leading officials, and his intellectual and media supporters...,
as nationalists, [are] absolutely contemptuous of any global order involving any check whatsoever
on American behavior and interests ;"
"Nationalism therefore risks undermining precisely those American values which make
the nation most admired in the world;" and
"This book...is intended as a reminder of the catastrophes into which nationalism and
national messianism led other great countries in the past."
Mr. Lieven addressed the above points in six well-crafted and thought-provoking chapters
that I find persuasive. For some readers Chapter 6, Nationalism, Israel, and the Middle East,
may be the most controversial. I am the only living person who has lunched with Gamal Abdel
Nasser and David Ben-Gurion in the same week. I have maintained an interest in Arab-Israeli
matters ever since. I find that Mr. Lieven's assessment of both the United States' and Israel's
role rings true. While he does not excuse Arab leaders for their misdeeds, he clearly documents
a history in which the United States has repeatedly subordinated vital U.S. regional interests
in favor of accepting whatever Israel chooses to do.
In 1955 American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote,
"The most prominent and persuasive failing [of political culture] is a certain proneness
to fits of moral crusading that would be fatal if they were not sooner or later tempered
with a measure of apathy and common sense."
I am confident that Professor Hofstadter would agree with me that AMERICA RIGHT OR WRONG
is a timely and important book.
Not every globalist is a (((globalist))), but an important globalist is usually a (((globalist))).
Thank you if you are really fighting globalism and not being just another controlled opposition.
+Jake Coughlin People like Clinton and Merkel don't truly believe in globalism either, they
are just opportunists. I like to look at them as just pawns in this game. Clinton could never
be an independent politician, since she is receiving so much money from very controversial sources.
I really like Ron Paul too, he is awesome and he is addressing some very important subjects.
Thanks to globalism, The Rebel has media outlets that can transmit to other countries. Thanks
to globalism, they can buy high performance cameras to film their anti-globalism videos.
Thanks to globalism, you can buy a vast variety of products at a cheap price. Globalism is
what makes free markets possible.
In other words globalism is the very definition of freedom of businesses. Thanks to globalism,
you don't have to live in a primitive, nationalist, isolated, 1800s society where you have Kings
and Queens who rule like conservative tyrants and keep the population ignorant as peasants. Globalism
is capitalism, the very value that made America so notorious.
Nationalism is feeling that one's country is superior to another. That's not pride in one's
country, don't get it twisted. Patriotism is pride in one's country and its values. Don't let
the nationalist confuse you with their twisted definitions of globalism.
Nationalism is what tyrants during WW1 and WW2 fed to the people in order to make them sign
up for a war that would only benefit those monarchies. Nationalism appeals to a very primitive
feeling of pride instead of logic and progress. Nationalism goes hand in hand with isolationism
which prevents small businesses to grow and limits the country to a very small group of overpriced
home products. Nationalism is regressive thinking. It opposes development and growth.
Technological progress is not globalism. Trade agreements between countries are not globalism.
You don't have to destroy all independent countries to have free markets. Poor kid... this is
how severe case of globalist brainwashing looks like.
"... US companies were always able to offshore work. Before commodity internet, telecom, and international transport (OK in good part enabled by international trade/etc. deals), that was much more costly. ..."
"... IT has made it possible to effectively manage larger business/institutional aggregate than before on an industrial scale and using industrial management paradigms. Others and I have made that case before. ..."
"... Put yourself in 1980, though. Think about the coordination you can organize. Think about sending components to a low labor cost jurisdiction for assembly. Perhaps paying a tariff and transportation to get there, then a tariff and transportation to get back. The labor is essentially free, but the other is real money. Ten years later the tariffs start to disappear. Containerization continues to drive down transport per unit. ..."
"... Sure, by now the best manufacturers are often foreign. They did not get there without our help. ..."
"... In the case of subsidiaries, this requires international legal frameworks allowing US companies to operate foreign subsidiaries, or buying foreign companies, with low enough overheads ("compliance" etc.) to make distributing work worthwhile. ..."
"... The general sentiment seems to be that people in "low cost geographies" are of lesser quality at least as concerns the subject matter. This is not my experience. What used to lack (as of today I would doubt even that) is years of experience, as the offshoring industry branches hadn't existed in the remote locations, so all you could hire was freshers; or a lag in access to bleeding edge Western technology and research literature. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been the case for about a decade. ..."
"... That IN THEORY, the exchange rate and other prices should adjust to any change in tax or regulatory regime to at least partly offset it. A lot of the practical problems arise, because price adjustments do not actually seem to happen to the extent predicted, and large financial imbalances are seen to become secular features of the economic landscape. ..."
"Revoking Trade Deals Will Not Help American Middle Classes."
Brad lives in a world with jump discontinuities in the distribution of expected returns from
labor arbitrage. That changing the cost of doing a deal will not reduce or unwind deals because
the gains from trade individually exceed any costs that could be imposed. So he can say, elsewhere,
the jobs ain't coming back, full stop.
"If the United States had imposed barriers to the construction of intercontinental value chains
would the semi-skilled and skilled manufacturing workers of the U.S. be better off?"
Brad does not find any relation between "imposing barriers" and "removing subsidy". Or in establishing
the older trade deals, between "removing barriers" and "subsidizing foreign labor". Where the
foreign labor operated in a low environmental protection environment, a low labor protection environment,
and probably others, it seems enabling US firms to invest in foreign operations to reap the savings
of less protection should be seen as subsidy.
US companies were always able to offshore work. Before commodity internet, telecom, and
international transport (OK in good part enabled by international trade/etc. deals), that was
much more costly.
IMO, offshoring has largely been an automation and IT story.
Likewise domestic/national level business consolidation.
IT has made it possible to effectively manage larger business/institutional aggregate than
before on an industrial scale and using industrial management paradigms. Others and I have made
that case before.
This is not a new insight, but probably still not an obvious one.
Put yourself in 1980, though. Think about the coordination you can organize. Think about sending
components to a low labor cost jurisdiction for assembly. Perhaps paying a tariff and transportation
to get there, then a tariff and transportation to get back. The labor is essentially free, but
the other is real money. Ten years later the tariffs start to disappear. Containerization continues
to drive down transport per unit.
Point one is that Brad assumes there is no one doing this now who is near break-even and would
go upside down with any change in tariff regime, so there is no one to relocate to the USA.
Point two is that we import environmental degradation and below market labor when we allow/encourage
these to be part of the ROI calculation through tariff policy.
Sure, by now the best manufacturers are often foreign. They did not get there without our help.
Well, one can argue that environmental improvements credited to regulation were in part exporting
environmental degradation, simply by moving polluting production facilities "over there".
E.g. I have seen it in my own work and with many others: companies can farm out any work to foreign
subsidiaries or contractors they don't want to keep stateside for some reason. In the case of
subsidiaries, this requires international legal frameworks allowing US companies to operate foreign
subsidiaries, or buying foreign companies, with low enough overheads ("compliance" etc.) to make
distributing work worthwhile.
Considering the case of US vs. Asia - depending on where you are in the US, Asia/PAC (India/Far
East/Pacific) business hours are off by about a half day because of time zone effects. To a lesser
but similar degree this applies to Europe and the Middle East.
The general sentiment seems to be that people in "low cost geographies" are of lesser quality
at least as concerns the subject matter. This is not my experience. What used to lack (as of today
I would doubt even that) is years of experience, as the offshoring industry branches hadn't existed
in the remote locations, so all you could hire was freshers; or a lag in access to bleeding edge
Western technology and research literature. This is no longer the case, and hasn't been the case
for about a decade.
Then there is the aspect that people in "some" geographies are more habituated to top-down
management styles, talking back less, etc. which may be an advantage or liability depending on
what the business requires of them.
I think one thing that is forgotten almost always in such discussions is that the arguments for
or against trade start with barter not so much with monetary exchange.
That IN THEORY, the exchange
rate and other prices should adjust to any change in tax or regulatory regime to at least partly
offset it. A lot of the practical problems arise, because price adjustments do not actually seem
to happen to the extent predicted, and large financial imbalances are seen to become secular features
of the economic landscape.
This is why I'm inclined to say that trade barriers are a bit of red
herring, the really big issues are financial (including the need for finding ways to repair damaged
middle class balance sheets). We need to stop seeing redistribution as a dirty word. It is what
democratic governments worth the name should be doing.
"... When Mr. Bannon spoke on Thursday of "deconstructing the administrative state," it may have sounded like gobbledygook outside the hall, but it was an electrifying profession of faith for the attendees. It is through Mr. Bannon that Trump_vs_deep_state can be converted from a set of nostalgic laments and complaints into a program for overhauling the government. ..."
"... Mr. Bannon's film features predictable interviews with think-tank supply siders and free marketers fretting about big government. But new, less orthodox voices creep in, too, from the protectionist newscaster Lou Dobbs to the investment manager Barry Ritholtz. They question whether the free market is altogether free. Mr. Ritholtz says that the outcome of the financial crisis has been "socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else." ..."
"... By 2014, Mr. Bannon's own ideology had become centered on this distrust. He was saying such things about capitalism himself. "Think about it," he said in a talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned against "the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by which he meant "a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a "Judeo-Christian" foundation. ..."
"... If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr. Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed the party whole, and its Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason for being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted. ..."
Weekly Standard senior editor Christoper Caldwell writes at the
New York Times
:
President Trump presents a problem to those who look at politics in terms of
systematic ideologies. He is either disinclined or unable to lay out his agenda
in that way. So perhaps it was inevitable that Mr. Trump's chief strategist,
Stephen K. Bannon, who does have a gift for thinking systematically, would be
so often invoked by Mr. Trump's opponents. They need him not just as a hate
object but as a heuristic, too. There may never be a "Trump_vs_deep_state," and unless one
emerges, the closest we may come to understanding this administration is as an
expression of "Bannonism."
Mr. Bannon, 63, has won a reputation for abrasive brilliance at almost every
stop in his unorthodox career - as a naval officer, Goldman Sachs mergers
specialist, entertainment-industry financier, documentary screenwriter and
director, Breitbart News cyber-agitprop impresario and chief executive of Mr.
Trump's presidential campaign. One Harvard Business School classmate described
him to The Boston Globe as "top three in intellectual horsepower in our class -
perhaps the smartest." Benjamin Harnwell of the Institute for Human Dignity, a
Catholic organization in Rome, calls him a "walking bibliography." Perhaps
because Mr. Bannon came late to conservatism, turning his full-time energy to
political matters only after the Sept. 11 attacks, he radiates an excitement
about it that most of his conservative contemporaries long ago lost.
Many accounts of Mr. Bannon paint him as a cartoon villain or internet troll
come to life, as a bigot, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a crypto-fascist. The
former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat
of New York, have even called him a "white nationalist." While he is certainly
a hard-line conservative of some kind, the evidence that he is an extremist of
a more troubling sort has generally been either massaged, misread or hyped up.
There may be good reasons to worry about Mr. Bannon, but they are not the
ones everyone is giving. It does not make Mr. Bannon a fascist that he happens
to know who the 20th-century Italian extremist Julius Evola is. It does not
make Mr. Bannon a racist that he described Breitbart as "the platform for the
alt-right" - a broad and imprecise term that applies to a wide array of
radicals, not just certain white supremacist groups.
Where Mr. Bannon does veer sharply from recent
mainstream Republicanism is in his all-embracing nationalism. He speaks of
sovereignty, economic nationalism, opposition to globalization and finding
common ground with Brexit supporters and other groups hostile to the
transnational European Union. On Thursday, at this year's Conservative
Political Action Conference, he described the "center core" of Trump
administration philosophy as the belief that the United States is more than an
economic unit in a borderless word. It is "a nation with a culture
"
and
"
a reason for being."
...
When Mr. Bannon spoke on Thursday of "deconstructing the administrative
state," it may have sounded like gobbledygook outside the hall, but it was an
electrifying profession of faith for the attendees. It is through Mr. Bannon
that Trump_vs_deep_state can be converted from a set of nostalgic laments and complaints
into a program for overhauling the government.
...
Mr. Bannon adds something personal and idiosyncratic to this Tea Party mix.
He has a theory of historical cycles that can be considered elegantly simple or
dangerously simplistic. It is a model laid out by William Strauss and Neil Howe
in two books from the 1990s. Their argument assumes an 80- to 100-year cycle
divided into roughly 20-year "highs," "awakenings," "unravelings" and "crises."
The American Revolution, the Civil War, the New Deal, World War II - Mr. Bannon
has said for years that we're due for another crisis about now. His documentary
about the 2008 financial collapse, "Generation Zero," released in 2010, uses
the Strauss-Howe model to explain what happened, and concludes with Mr. Howe
himself saying, "History is seasonal, and winter is coming."
Mr. Bannon's views reflect a transformation of conservatism over the past
decade or so. You can trace this transformation in the films he has made. His
2004 documentary, "In the Face of Evil," is an orthodox tribute to the
Republican Party hero Ronald Reagan. But "Generation Zero," half a decade
later, is a strange hybrid. The financial crash has intervened.
Mr.
Bannon's film features predictable interviews with think-tank supply siders and
free marketers fretting about big government. But new, less orthodox voices
creep in, too, from the protectionist newscaster Lou Dobbs to the investment
manager Barry Ritholtz. They question whether the free market is altogether
free. Mr. Ritholtz says that the outcome of the financial crisis has been
"socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody else."
By 2014, Mr. Bannon's own ideology had become centered on this distrust. He
was saying such things about capitalism himself. "Think about it," he said in a
talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal charge has
ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned
against "the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by
which he meant "a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and
to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought to rest on a "Judeo-Christian"
foundation.
If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr.
Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era
agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed the party whole, and its
Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason for
being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted.
But voters never more than tolerated it. It was Pat Buchanan who in his 1992
run for president first called on Republicans to value jobs and communities
over profits. An argument consumed the party over whether this was a
better-rounded vision of society or just the grousing of a reactionary. After a
generation, Mr. Buchanan has won that argument. By 2016 his views on trade and
migration, once dismissed as crackpot, were spreading so fast that everyone in
the party had embraced them - except its elected officials and its
establishment presidential candidates.
Mr. Bannon does not often go into detail about what Judeo-Christian culture is,
but he knows one thing it is not: Islam. Like most Americans, he believes that
Islamism - the extremist political movement - is a dangerous adversary. More
controversially he holds that, since this political movement is generated
within the sphere of Islam, the growth of Islam - the religion - is itself a
problem with which American authorities should occupy themselves. This is a
view that was emphatically repudiated by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush.
Mr. Bannon has apparently drawn his own views on the subject from intensive, if
not necessarily varied, reading. The thinkers he has engaged with in this area
tend to be hot and polemical rather than cool and detached. They include the
provocateur Pamela Geller, a campaigner against the "Ground Zero Mosque" who
once suggested the State Department was "essentially being run by Islamic
supremacists"; her sometime collaborator Robert Spencer, the director of the
website Jihad Watch, with whom she heads an organization called Stop
Islamization of America; and the former Department of Homeland Security
official Philip Haney, who has argued that officials in the Obama
administration had compromised "the security of citizens for the ideological
rigidity of political correctness."
He approves definition of neoliberalism as "socialism for the wealthy but capitalism for everybody
else."
Looks like his views are not very comparable with Republican Party platform (or Clinton wing
of Democratic Party platform, being "small republicans" in disguise)
== quote ==
"Think about it," he said in a talk hosted by the Institute for Human Dignity. "Not one criminal
charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis." He warned against
"the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism," by which he meant "a capitalism
that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people." Capitalism, he said, ought
to rest on a "Judeo-Christian" foundation.
== quote ==
If so, this was bad news for the Republican Party. By the time Mr. Bannon spoke, Ayn Rand-style
capitalism was all that remained of its Reagan-era agenda. Free-market thinking had swallowed
the party whole, and its Judeo-Christian preoccupations - "a nation with a culture" and "a reason
for being" - along with it. A business orientation was what donors wanted.
"... Finally the most obvious attempt to sabotage the administration can be seen in the events in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Senators Graham and McCain, two of the deep state's top emissaries, visited Ukraine at the beginning of the year, prompting Ukrainian troops to resume their destructive offensive against the Donbass. ..."
"... "There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers", Trump said. "Well, you think our country is so innocent?" ..."
"... What the deep state refuses to accept is that they have lost the leading role in educating the rest of the world on humanitarian issues related to the concept of democracy. The main actors of the deep state clearly understand the negative implications for them personally in economic and financial terms associated with the abandonment of the pursuit of global hegemony. For over a hundred years, no US president has ever placed their country on a par with others, has ever abandoned the concept of a nation (the US) "chosen by God". ..."
"... "Donald Trump has emerged with in mind a precise foreign policy strategy, forged by various political thinkers of the realist world such as Waltz and Mearsheimer, trashing all recent neoconservative and neoliberal policies of foreign intervention (R2P - Right to Protect) and soft power campaigns in favor of human rights. No more UN resolutions, subtly used to bomb nations (Libya). Trump doesn't believe in the central role of the UN and reaffirmed this repeatedly. ..."
"... If one wants to place weight on his words during the election campaign, it should be taken into consideration that Trump won the election thanks to the clear objectives of wanting to avoid a further spending spree on destructive wars. This priority was made clear and expressed in every possible way with the adoption of an America First policy, especially regarding domestic policy. ..."
"... The bottom line is always that Trump has the ability and willingness to be resilient to the pressures of the deep state, focusing on the needs of the average American citizen, rather than caving in to the interests of the deep state such as intelligence agencies, neocons, Israel lobby, Saudi lobby, the military-industrial complex, and many more. ..."
The first two weeks of the new presidency have already provided a few significant events. The
operation that took place in Yemen, conducted by the American special forces and directed against
Al Qaeda, has reprised the previous administration. Being a complex operation that required thorough
preparation, the new administration thereby had to necessarily represent a continuation of the old
one.
Details are still vague, but looking at the outcome, the mission failed as a result of incompetence.
The American special forces were spotted before arriving at al Qaeda's supposed base. This resulted
in the shooting of anything that moved, causing more than 25 civilian deaths.
The media that had been silent during the Obama administration was rightfully quick to condemn
the killing of innocent people, and harsh criticism was directed at the administration for this operation.
It is entirely possible that the operation was set up to fail, intended to delegitimize the operational
capabilities of the new Trump team. Given the links between al Qaeda, the Saudis and the neoconservatives,
something historically proven, it is not unthinkable that the failure of the operation was a consequence
of an initial attempt at sabotaging Trump on a key aspect of his presidency, namely the successful
execution of counter-terrorist efforts against Islamist terrorism.
Another structural component in the attempts to undermine the Trump administration concern the
deployment of NATO and US troops on the western border of the Russian Federation. This attempt is
obvious and is one of the strategies aimed at preventing a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow.
The EU persists in its self-defeating policy, focusing its attention on foreign policy instead of
gaining strategic independence thanks to the new presidency. It is now even more clear that European
Union leaders, and in particular the current political representatives in Germany and France, have
every intention of continuing in the direction set by the Obama presidency, seeking a futile confrontation
with the Russian Federation instead of a sensible rapprochement.
Europe continues to insist on failed economic and social policies that will lead to bankruptcy,
using foreign-policy issues as diversions and excuses. The consequences of these wrongheaded efforts
will inevitably favor the election of nationalist and populist parties, as seen in the United States
and other countries, which will end in the destruction of the EU. For the US deep state and their
long-term objectives, this tactic has a dual effect: it prevents the proper functioning of the EU
as well as significantly halts any rapprochement between the EU and the Russian Federation. The latter
strategy looks more and more irreversible given the current European Union elites. In this sense,
the UK, thanks to Brexit, seems to have broken free and started to slowly restructure its foreign-
policy priorities, in close alignment to Trump's isolationism.
Finally the most obvious attempt to sabotage the administration can be seen in the events
in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Senators Graham and McCain, two of the deep state's top emissaries, visited
Ukraine at the beginning of the year, prompting Ukrainian troops to resume their destructive offensive
against the Donbass. The intentions are clear and assorted. First is the constant attempt to
sabotage any rapprochement between Moscow and Washington, hoping to engulf Trump in an American/NATO
escalation of events in Ukraine. Second, given the critical situation in Europe, is the effort to
push Berlin to assume the burden of economically supporting the failing administration in Kiev. Third
is the increasing pressure applied to Russia and Putin, as was already seen in 2014, in an effort
to actively involve the Russian Federation in the Ukrainian conflict so as to justify NATO's direct
involvement or even that of the United States. The latter situation would be the dream of the neoconservatives,
setting Trump and Putin on a direct collision course.
The new American administration has thus far suffered at least three sabotage attempts, and it
is the attitude Trump intends to have with the rest of the world that has spurred them. In an interview
with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, Trump reiterated that his primary focus is not governed by the doctrine
of American exceptionalism, a concept he does not subscribe to anyhow. The religion driving democratic
evangelization looks more likely to be replaced with a pragmatic, realist geopolitical stance.
This is how one could sum up Trump's words to Bill O'Reilly:
"There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers", Trump said. "Well, you think our country
is so innocent?"
What the deep state refuses to accept is that they have lost the leading role in educating
the rest of the world on humanitarian issues related to the concept of democracy. The main actors
of the deep state clearly understand the negative implications for them personally in economic and
financial terms associated with the abandonment of the pursuit of global hegemony. For over a hundred
years, no US president has ever placed their country on a par with others, has ever abandoned the
concept of a nation (the US) "chosen by God".
In an
article a few weeks ago, I tried to lay the foundations for a future US administration, placing
a strong focus on foreign policy and revealing a possible shift in US historic foreign relations.
In a passage I wrote:
"Donald Trump has emerged with in mind a precise foreign policy strategy, forged by various
political thinkers of the realist world such as Waltz and Mearsheimer, trashing all recent neoconservative
and neoliberal policies of foreign intervention (R2P - Right to Protect) and soft power campaigns
in favor of human rights. No more UN resolutions, subtly used to bomb nations (Libya). Trump doesn't
believe in the central role of the UN and reaffirmed this repeatedly.
In general, the Trump administration intends to end the policy of regime change, interference
in foreign governments, Arab springs and color revolutions. They just don't work. They cost too much
in terms of political credibility, in Ukraine the US are allied with supporters of Bandera (historical
figure who collaborated with the Nazis) and in Middle East they finance or indirectly support al
Qaeda and al Nusra front".
The recent meeting in Washington with Theresa May, the first official encounter with a prominent
US ally, revealed, among other things, a possible dramatic change in US policy. The Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom expressed her desire to follow a new policy of non-intervention, in line with
the isolationist strategy Trump has spoken about since running for office. In a joint press conference
with the American president, May said: "The era of military intervention is over. London and Washington
will not return to the failed policy in the past that has led to intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan
and Libya".
During the election campaign, Trump made his intentions clear in different contexts, but always
coming from the standpoint of non-interventionism inspired by the concept of isolationism. It is
becoming apparent that these intentions are being put into action, though the rhetoric regarding
Iran has become alarming. In typical Trump fashion (which contrasts with the Iran issue), the situation
in Syria is normalizing and the initial threats directed at China appear to have been put aside.
The case of Iran is a different and complex story, requiring a deeper analysis that deserves a separate
article. What will gradually be important, as the Presidency progresses, is understanding the necessity
to distinguish between words and actions, separating provocations from intentions.
Conclusions and future questions
There is a whole list of Trump statements that are seen as threats to other countries, primarily
Iran. The next article will further explain the possible strategy to be employed by Donald Trump
to fight these attempts to sabotage his administration, a strategy that seems to be based on silences,
bluffs and admissions to counter the perpetual attempts to influence his presidency. If one wants
to place weight on his words during the election campaign, it should be taken into consideration
that Trump won the election thanks to the clear objectives of wanting to avoid a further spending
spree on destructive wars. This priority was made clear and expressed in every possible way with
the adoption of an America First policy, especially regarding domestic policy.
The bottom line is always that Trump has the ability and willingness to be resilient to the pressures
of the deep state, focusing on the needs of the average American citizen, rather than caving in to
the interests of the deep state such as intelligence agencies, neocons, Israel lobby, Saudi lobby,
the military-industrial complex, and many more. It is only in the next few months that we will come
to understand if Trump will be willing to continue the fight against war or bend the knee and pay
the price.
" What the deep state refuses to accept is that they have lost the leading role in educating
the rest of the world on humanitarian issues related to the concept of democracy."
This was a strange article, but after reading the above quote I had to laugh and could not
find the gumption to continue reading.
The Deep State ought to have beaten Trump already - one way or another...! But somebody with
brains has realised that it's not just Trump. It's the political movement that he heads***. Even
if they killed DT tomorrow (and it's certain to have been on their agenda), the Trumpista Party
would survive: it's too active and too popular to disappear. So the establishment pretty much
has to wrap up the entire movement. They have left things dangerously late, from their point of
view.
*** I know he didn't start it; it's the old Pat Buchanan + Ron Paul gang, but Donald is twice
as cunning as those chaps. I really don't think he'll win his war with the bad guys - the War
Party - but his influence will be quite long-lasting. And of course he is our last hope to roll
back the spectre of "1984".
Authors outlined important reasons of the inevitability of the dominance of chicken hawks and jingoistic
foreign policy in the USA political establishment:
.
"...Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our
infrastructure crumbles. Democracy
itself has become virtually dysfunctional."
.
"...leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton and
Paul Wolfowitz
- who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place.
War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned."
.
"...A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney and
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
"
.
"...But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and
"un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices."
.
"...The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi
from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions
thousands of miles from its borders."
.
"...The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide,
about the same as the British Empire had at its height in 1895.
. The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans have
been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were major undertakings:
Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some were quick "smash and
grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces, armed drones, and
local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized violence, the U.S. has
engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945."
.
"...The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security
state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the
most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised."
.
"...the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter
Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin America
- put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:"
.
"...In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent
believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46
percent opposed it.
.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has
ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift
toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy."
Notable quotes:
"... Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and our infrastructure crumbles . Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional. ..."
"... leading presidential candidates are tapping neoconservatives like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned. ..."
"... A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain . ..."
"... But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic" and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning voices. ..."
"... The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force in regions thousands of miles from its borders. ..."
"... As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth - continues to plague our homeland . ..."
"... The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The Senate torture report , most of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised. ..."
"... the U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. ..."
"... In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans agreed that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37 percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State began, those numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force, 46 percent opposed it. It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS, disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy. ..."
U.S. foreign policy is dangerous, undemocratic, and deeply out of sync with real global
challenges. Is continuous war inevitable, or can we change course?
There's something fundamentally wrong with U.S. foreign policy.
Despite glimmers of hope - a tentative
nuclear agreement with Iran, for one, and a long-overdue thaw with Cuba - we're locked into seemingly
irresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world. They range from tensions with nuclear-armed
powers like Russia and China to actual combat operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
Why? Has a state of perpetual warfare and conflict become inescapable? Or are we in a self-replicating
cycle that reflects an inability - or unwillingness - to see the world as it actually is?
The United States is undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world,
but this is neither acknowledged nor reflected in U.S. foreign policy. We still act as if our enormous
military power, imperial alliances, and self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms
of "world order."
While this illusion goes back to the end of World War II, it was the end of the Cold War and collapse
of the Soviet Union that signaled the beginning of a self-proclaimed "American Century." The idea
that the United States had "won" the Cold War and now - as the world's lone superpower - had the
right or responsibility to order the world's affairs led to a series of military adventures. It started
with President Bill Clinton's intervention in the Yugoslav civil war, continued on with George W.
Bush's disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and can still be seen in the Obama administration's
own misadventures in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and beyond.
In each case, Washington chose war as the answer to enormously complex issues, ignoring the profound
consequences for both foreign and domestic policy. Yet the world is very different from the assumptions
that drive this impulsive interventionism.
It's this disconnect that defines the current crisis.
Acknowledging New Realities
So what is it about the world that requires a change in our outlook? A few observations come to
mind.
First, our preoccupation with conflicts in the Middle East - and to a significant extent,
our tensions with Russia in Eastern Europe and with China in East Asia - distract us from the
most compelling crises that threaten the future of humanity. Climate change and environmental
perils have to be dealt with now and demand an unprecedented level of international collective
action. That also holds for the resurgent danger of nuclear war.
Second, superpower military interventionism and far-flung acts of war have only intensified
conflict, terror, and human suffering. There's no short-term solution - especially by force -
to the deep-seated problems that cause chaos, violence, and misery through much of the world.
Third, while any hope of curbing violence and mitigating the most urgent problems depends
on international cooperation, old and disastrous intrigues over spheres of influence dominate
the behavior of the major powers. Our own relentless pursuit of military advantage on every continent,
including through alliances and proxies like NATO, divides the world into "friend" and "foe" according
to our perceived interests. That inevitably inflames aggressive imperial rivalries and overrides
common interests in the 21st century.
Fourth, while the United States remains a great economic power, economic and political influence
is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers no longer controlled by U.S.-dominated
global financial structures. Away from Washington, London, and Berlin,
alternative centers of
economic power are taking hold in Beijing, New Delhi, Cape Town, and Brasilia. Independent
formations and alliances are springing up: organizations like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, and South Africa); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (representing 2.8 billion people);
the Union of South American Nations; the Latin American trade bloc, Mercosur; and others.
Beyond the problems our delusions of grandeur have caused in the wider world, there are enormous
domestic consequences of prolonged war and interventionism. We shell out
over $1 trillion a year in military-related expenses even as our social safety net frays and
our infrastructure crumbles.
Democracy itself has become virtually dysfunctional.
Short Memories and Persistent Delusions
But instead of letting these changing circumstances and our repeated military failures give us
pause, our government continues to act as if the United States has the power to dominate and dictate
to the rest of the world.
The responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background. Indeed, in light
of the ongoing meltdown in the Middle East, leading presidential candidates are
tapping neoconservatives like
John Bolton
and Paul Wolfowitz
- who still think the answer to any foreign policy quandary is military power - for advice. Our leaders
seem to forget that following this lot's advice was exactly what caused the meltdown in the first
place. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.
While the Obama administration has sought, with limited success, to end the major wars it inherited,
our government makes wide use of killer drones in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and has put troops
back into Iraq to confront the religious fanaticism and brutality of the so-called Islamic State
(ISIS) - itself a direct consequence of the last U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reluctant to find common
ground in the fight against ISIS with designated "foes" like Iran and Syria, Washington clings to
allies like Saudi Arabia, whose leaders are fueling the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine
barbarity. Elsewhere, the U.S. also continues to give massive support to the Israeli government,
despite its expanding occupation of the West Bank and its horrific recurring assaults on Gaza.
A "war first" policy in places like Iran and Syria is being strongly pushed by neoconservatives
like former Vice President
Dick Cheney
and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman
John McCain.
Though it's attempted to distance itself from the neocons, the Obama administration adds to tensions
with planned military realignments like the "Asia
pivot" aimed at building up U.S. military forces in Asia to confront China. It's also taken a
more aggressive position than even other NATO partners in fostering a new cold war with Russia.
We seem to have missed the point: There is no such thing as an "American Century." International
order cannot be enforced by a superpower alone. But never mind centuries - if we don't learn to take
our common interests more seriously than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of
war, there may well be no tomorrows.
Unexceptionalism
There's a powerful ideological delusion that any movement seeking to change U.S. foreign policy
must confront: that U.S. culture is superior to anything else on the planet. Generally going by the
name of "American exceptionalism," it's the deeply held belief that American politics (and medicine,
technology, education, and so on) are better than those in other countries. Implicit in the belief
is an evangelical urge to impose American ways of doing things on the rest of the world.
Americans, for instance, believe they have the best education system in the world, when in fact
they've dropped from 1st place to 14th place in the number of college graduates.
We've made students of higher education the most indebted section of our population, while falling
to 17th place in international education ratings. According to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation, the average American pays more than twice as much for his or her education than those
in the rest of the world.
Health care is an equally compelling example. In the World Health Organization's ranking of health
care systems in 2000, the United States was ranked 37th. In a more recent
Institute of Medicine report in 2013, the U.S. was ranked the lowest among 17 developed nations
studied.
The old anti-war slogan, "It will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the
Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy an aircraft carrier" is as appropriate today as it was in the
1960s. We prioritize corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive military budgets
over education. The result is that Americans are no longer among the most educated in the world.
But challenging the "exceptionalism" myth courts the danger of being labeled "unpatriotic"
and "un-American," two powerful ideological sanctions that can effectively silence critical or questioning
voices.
The fact that Americans consider their culture or ideology "superior" is hardly unique. But no
other country in the world has the same level of economic and military power to enforce its worldview
on others.
The United States did not simply support Kosovo's independence, for example. It bombed Serbia
into de facto acceptance. When the U.S. decided to remove the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar
Gaddafi from power, it just did so. No other country is capable of projecting that kind of force
in regions thousands of miles from its borders.
The U.S. currently accounts for anywhere from 45 to 50 percent of the world's military spending.
It has hundreds of overseas bases, ranging from huge sprawling affairs like Camp Bond Steel in Kosovo
and unsinkable aircraft carriers around the islands of Okinawa, Wake, Diego Garcia, and Guam to tiny
bases called "lily
pads" of pre-positioned military supplies. The late political scientist Chalmers Johnson
estimated that the U.S. has some 800 bases worldwide, about the same as the British Empire had at
its height in 1895.
The United States has long relied on a military arrow in its diplomatic quiver, and Americans
have been at war almost continuously since the end of World War II. Some of these wars were
major undertakings: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), Libya. Some
were quick "smash and grabs" like Panama and Grenada. Others are "shadow wars" waged by Special Forces,
armed drones, and local proxies. If one defines the term "war" as the application of organized
violence, the U.S. has engaged in close to 80 wars since 1945.
The Home Front
The coin of empire comes dear, as the old expression goes.
According Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, the final butcher bill for the Afghanistan
and Iraq wars - including the long-term health problems of veterans - will cost U.S. taxpayers around
$6 trillion. One can add to that the over $1 trillion the U.S. spends each year on defense-related
items. The "official" defense budget of some half a trillion dollars doesn't include such items as
nuclear weapons, veterans' benefits or retirement, the CIA and Homeland Security, nor the billions
a year in interest we'll be paying on the debt from the Afghan-Iraq wars. By 2013 the U.S. had already
paid out $316 billion
in interest.
The domestic collateral damage from that set of priorities is numbing.
We spend more on our "official" military budget than we do on Medicare, Medicaid, Health and Human
Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development combined. Since 9/11,
we've
spent $70 million an hour on "security" compared to $62 million an hour on all domestic programs.
As military expenditures dwarf funding for deteriorating social programs, they drive economic
inequality. The poor and working millions are left further and further behind. Meanwhile the chronic
problems highlighted at Ferguson, and reflected nationwide, are a horrific reminder of how deeply
racism - the unequal economic and social divide and systemic abuse of black and Latino youth -
continues to plague our homeland.
The state of ceaseless war has deeply damaged our democracy, bringing our surveillance and
security state to levels that many dictators would envy. The
Senate torture report, most
of it still classified, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus
that runs
the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.
Bombs and Business
President Calvin Coolidge was said to have remarked that "the business of America is business."
Unsurprisingly, U.S. corporate interests play a major role in American foreign policy.
Out of the top 10 international arms producers, eight are American. The arms industry spends millions
lobbying Congress and state legislatures, and it defends its turf with an efficiency and vigor that
its products don't always emulate on the battlefield. The F-35 fighter-bomber, for example - the
most expensive weapons system in U.S. history - will cost $1.5 trillion and doesn't work. It's over
budget, dangerous to fly, and riddled with defects. And yet few lawmakers dare challenge the powerful
corporations who have shoved this lemon down our throats.
Corporate interests are woven into the fabric of long-term U.S. strategic interests and goals.
Both combine to try to control energy supplies, command strategic choke points through which oil
and gas supplies transit, and ensure access to markets.
Many of these goals can be achieved with standard diplomacy or economic pressure, but the
U.S. always reserves the right to use military force. The 1979 "Carter
Doctrine" - a document that mirrors the 1823 Monroe Doctrine about American interests in Latin
America - put that strategy in blunt terms vis-à-vis the Middle East:
"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded
as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled
by any means necessary, including military force."
It's no less true in East Asia. The U.S. will certainly engage in peaceful economic competition
with China. But if push comes to shove, the Third, Fifth, and Seventh fleets will back up the interests
of Washington and its allies - Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia.
Trying to change the course of American foreign policy is not only essential for reducing international
tensions. It's critically important to shift the enormous wealth we expend in war and weapons toward
alleviating growing inequality and social crises at home.
As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations
will vie for spheres of influence, and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international
relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions real or imagined - and the impulse to respond by military
means - is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. Yet the more that some
governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril.
Finding the Common Interest
These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future.
There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction, even if the demise
or transformation of a capitalistic system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential
for change, especially in U.S. foreign policy, resides in how social movements here and abroad respond
to the undeniable reality of: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and danger inherent in "American
Century" exceptionalism; and 2) the urgency of international efforts to respond to climate change.
There is, as well, the necessity to respond to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty,
to rising messianic violence, and above all, to prevent a descent into war. This includes not only
the danger of a clash between the major nuclear powers, but between regional powers. A nuclear exchange
between Pakistan and India, for example, would affect the whole world.
Without underestimating the self-interest of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of
humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and
survival. The need to change course is not something that can be recognized on only one side of an
ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic, or religious identity.
Rather, it demands acknowledging the enormous cost of plunging ahead as everything falls apart around
us.
After the latest U.S. midterm elections, the political outlook is certainly bleak. But experience
shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant
change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances
have occurred because a dedicated and persistent minority movement helped change public opinion in
a way the political establishment could not defy.
The Vietnam War, for example, came to an end, despite the stubbornness of Democratic and Republican
administrations, when a stalemate on the battlefield and growing international and domestic opposition
could no longer be denied. Significant changes can come about even as the basic character of society
is retained. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the British Empire and other
colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. McCarthyism was eventually defeated
in the United States. President Nixon was forced to resign. The use of landmines and cluster bombs
has been greatly restricted because of the opposition of a small band of activists whose initial
efforts were labeled "quixotic."
There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger
of the course we're on. Many Republicans, Democrats, independents, and libertarians - and much of
the public - are beginning to say "enough" to war and military intervention all over the globe, and
the folly of basing foreign policy on dividing countries into "friend or foe."
This is not to be Pollyannaish about anti-war sentiment, or how quickly people can be stampeded
into supporting the use of force. In early 2014, some 57 percent of Americans
agreed
that "over-reliance on military force creates more hatred leading to increased terrorism." Only 37
percent believed military force was the way to go. But once the hysteria around the Islamic State
began, those
numbers shifted to pretty much an even split: 47 percent supported the use of military force,
46 percent opposed it.
It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public
into acceptance of another military intervention. But in spite of the current hysterics about ISIS,
disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now among Americans and worldwide than it
has ever been. That sentiment may prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war,
a shift toward some modesty and common-sense realism in U.S. foreign policy.
Making Space for the Unexpected
Given that there is a need for a new approach, how can American foreign policy be changed?
Foremost, there is the need for a real debate on the thrust of a U.S. foreign policy that chooses
negotiation, diplomacy, and international cooperation over the use of force.
However, as we approach another presidential election, there is as yet no strong voice among the
candidates to challenge U.S. foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even
most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further
into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of political acquiescence has to be broken.
Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans - right, left, or neither
- who sense the futility of the course we're on. These voices have to be represented or the election
process will be even more of a sham than we've recently experienced.
One can't predict just what initiatives may take hold, but the recent U.S.-China climate agreement
suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. That accord is an important step forward,
although a limited bilateral pact
cannot
substitute for an essential international climate treaty. There is a glimmer of hope also in
the U.S.-Russian joint action that
removed
chemical weapons from Syria, and in negotiations with Iran, which continue despite
fierce opposition
from U.S. hawks and the Israeli government. More recently, there is Obama's bold move - long overdue
- to restore diplomatic
relations with Cuba. Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there
is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.
We do not claim to have ready-made solutions to the worsening crisis in international relations.
We are certain that there is much we've missed or underestimated. But if readers agree that U.S.
foreign policy has a national and global impact, and that it is not carried out in the interests
of the majority of the world's people, including our own, then we ask you to join this conversation.
If we are to expand the ability of the people to influence foreign policy, we need to defend democracy,
and encourage dissent and alternative ideas. The threats to the world and to ourselves are so great
that finding common ground trumps any particular interest. We also know that we won't all agree with
each other, and we believe that is as it should be. There are multiple paths to the future. No coalition
around changing foreign policy will be successful if it tells people to conform to any one pattern
of political action.
So how does the call for changing course translate to something politically viable, and how do
we consider the problem of power?
The power to make significant changes in policy ranges from the persistence of peace activists
to the potential influence of the general public. In some circumstances, it becomes possible - as
well as necessary - to make significant changes in the power structure itself.
Greece comes to mind. Greek left organizations came together to form Syriza, the political party
that was successfully elected to power
on a platform of ending austerity. Spain's anti-austerity Podemos Party - now the number-two party
in the country - came out of massive demonstrations in 2011 and was organized from the grassroots
up. We do not argue one approach over the over, but the experiences in both countries demonstrate
that there are multiple paths to generating change.
Certainly progressives and leftists grapple with the problems of power. But progress on issues,
particularly in matters like war and peace and climate change, shouldn't be conceived of as dependent
on first achieving general solutions to the problems of society, however desirable.
... ... ...
Conn Hallinan is a journalist and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. His writings appear
online at Dispatches From
the Edge. Leon Wofsy is a retired biology professor and long-time political activist. His comments
on current affairs appear online at Leon's
OpEd.
David Stockman provides one of the best commentaries on Flynn assassination by deep state and Obama neocon holdovers in the administration.
This is a really powerful astute, first class analysis of the situation:
Flynn's Gone But They're Still Gunning For You, Donald
== quote ==
... ... ...
This is the real scandal as Trump himself has rightly asserted. The very idea that the already announced #1 national security advisor
to a President-elect should be subject to old-fashion "bugging," albeit with modern day technology, overwhelmingly trumps the utterly
specious Logan Act charge at the center of the case.
As one writer for LawNewz noted regarding acting Attorney General Sally Yates' voyeuristic pre-occupation with Flynn's intercepted
conversations, Nixon should be rolling in his grave with envy:
Now, information leaks that Sally Yates knew about surveillance being conducted against potential members of the Trump administration,
and disclosed that information to others. Even Richard Nixon didn't use the government agencies themselves to do his black bag surveillance
operations. Sally Yates involvement with this surveillance on American political opponents, and possibly the leaking related thereto,
smacks of a return to Hoover-style tactics. As writers at Bloomberg and The Week both noted, it wreaks of 'police-state' style tactics.
But knowing dear Sally as I do, it comes as no surprise.
Yes, that's the same career apparatchik of the permanent government that Obama left behind to continue the 2016 election by other
means. And it's working. The Donald is being rapidly emasculated by the powers that be in the Imperial City due to what can only
be described as an audacious and self-evident attack on Trump's Presidency by the Deep State.
Indeed, it seems that the layers of intrigue have gotten so deep and convoluted that the nominal leadership of the permanent government
machinery has lost track of who is spying on whom. Thus, we have the following curious utterance by none other than the Chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes:
'I expect for the FBI to tell me what is going on, and they better have a good answer,' he told The Washington Post. 'The big
problem I see here is that you have an American citizen who had his phone calls recorded.'
Well, yes. That makes 324 million of us, Congressman.
But for crying out loud, surely the oh so self-important chairman of the House intelligence committee knows that everybody is
bugged. But when it reaches the point that the spy state is essentially using its unconstitutional tools to engage in what amounts
to "opposition research" with the aim of election nullification, then the Imperial City has become a clear and present danger to
American democracy and the liberties of the American people.
As Robert Barnes of LawNewz further explained, Sally Yates, former CIA director John Brennan and a large slice of the Never Trumper
intelligence community were systematically engaged in "opposition research" during the campaign and the transition:
According to published reports, someone was eavesdropping, and recording, the conversations of Michael Flynn, while Sally Yates
was at the Department of Justice. Sally Yates knew about this eavesdropping, listened in herself (Pellicano-style for those who remember
the infamous LA cases), and reported what she heard to others. For Yates to have such access means she herself must have been involved
in authorizing its disclosure to political appointees, since she herself is such a political appointee. What justification was there
for an Obama appointee to be spying on the conversations of a future Trump appointee?
Consider this little tidbit in The Washington Post . The paper, which once broke Watergate, is now propagating the benefits of
Watergate-style surveillance in ways that do make Watergate look like a third-rate effort. (With the) FBI 'routinely' monitoring
conversations of Americans...... Yates listened to 'the intercepted call,' even though Yates knew there was 'little chance' of any
credible case being made for prosecution under a law 'that has never been used in a prosecution.'
And well it hasn't been. After all, the Logan Act was signed by President John Adams in 1799 in order to punish one of Thomas
Jefferson's supporters for having peace discussions with the French government in Paris. That is, it amounted to pre-litigating the
Presidential campaign of 1800 based on sheer political motivation.
According to the Washington Post itself, that is exactly what Yates and the Obama holdovers did day and night during the interregnum:
Indeed, the paper details an apparent effort by Yates to misuse her office to launch a full-scale secret investigation of her political
opponents, including 'intercepting calls' of her political adversaries.
So all of the feigned outrage emanating from Democrats and the Washington establishment about Team Trump's trafficking with the
Russians is a cover story. Surely anyone even vaguely familiar with recent history would have known there was absolutely nothing
illegal or even untoward about Flynn's post-Christmas conversations with the Russian Ambassador.
Indeed, we recall from personal experience the thrilling moment on inauguration day in January 1981 when word came of the release
of the American hostages in Tehran. Let us assure you, that did not happen by immaculate diplomatic conception -- nor was it a parting
gift to the Gipper by the outgoing Carter Administration.
To the contrary, it was the fruit of secret negotiations with the Iranian government during the transition by private American
citizens. As the history books would have it because it's true, the leader of that negotiation, in fact, was Ronald Reagan's national
security council director-designate, Dick Allen.
As the real Washington Post later reported, under the by-line of a real reporter, Bob Woodward:
Reagan campaign aides met in a Washington DC hotel in early October, 1980, with a self-described 'Iranian exile' who offered,
on behalf of the Iranian government, to release the hostages to Reagan, not Carter, in order to ensure Carter's defeat in the November
4, 1980 election.
The American participants were Richard Allen, subsequently Reagan's first national security adviser, Allen aide Laurence Silberman,
and Robert McFarlane, another future national security adviser who in 1980 was on the staff of Senator John Tower (R-TX).
To this day we have not had occasion to visit our old friend Dick Allen in the US penitentiary because he's not there; the Logan
Act was never invoked in what is surely the most blatant case ever of citizen diplomacy.
So let's get to the heart of the matter and be done with it. The Obama White House conducted a sour grapes campaign to delegitimize
the election beginning November 9th and it was led by then CIA Director John Brennan.
That treacherous assault on the core constitutional matter of the election process culminated in the ridiculous Russian meddling
report of the Obama White House in December. The latter, of course, was issued by serial liar James Clapper, as national intelligence
director, and the clueless Democrat lawyer and bag-man, Jeh Johnson, who had been appointed head of the Homeland Security Department.
Yet on the basis of the report's absolutely zero evidence and endless surmise, innuendo and "assessments", the Obama White House
imposed another round of its silly school-boy sanctions on a handful of Putin's cronies.
Of course, Flynn should have been telling the Russian Ambassador that this nonsense would be soon reversed!
But here is the ultimate folly. The mainstream media talking heads are harrumphing loudly about the fact that the very day following
Flynn's call -- Vladimir Putin announced that he would not retaliate against the new Obama sanctions as expected; and shortly thereafter,
the Donald tweeted that Putin had shown admirable wisdom.
That's right. Two reasonably adult statesman undertook what might be called the Christmas Truce of 2016. But like its namesake
of 1914 on the bloody no man's land of the western front, the War Party has determined that the truce-makers shall not survive.
"... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
"... From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto. ..."
"... Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make or shipbuilding in Asia. ..."
"... Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the past? ..."
"... Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization. Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts, already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise? ..."
"... Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing else. ..."
"... So proof is required to rollback globalization, but no proof was required to launch it or continue dishing it out? It's good to be the King, eh? ..."
"... America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico, you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak English. How do you make this work? ..."
"... The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. ..."
"... There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve. ..."
"... When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to production problems and issues. ..."
"... After his speech he took questions. I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing to Asia. "No" was his answer. ..."
"... In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control. ..."
"... How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the wind. ..."
"... The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved. ..."
"... I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying ..."
"... "Right to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive pay." ..."
"... I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not under threat from it. ..."
"... First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem", where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk. ..."
"... So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden? ..."
"... One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to the 3rd in the past. ..."
"... And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately played the global guilt card in response. ..."
"... During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders. ..."
"... Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast returns that way but that's just the point. ..."
"... China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on. ..."
"... In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. ..."
"... "Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive banking system." ..."
"... The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian. Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread subsidy. Ciao. ..."
"... 80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country! ..."
"... Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political platforms. ..."
"... Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction. ..."
"... Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers' ..."
"... and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. ..."
"... The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation. ..."
Definitely a pleasant read but IMHO wrong conclusion: Yet, a return to protectionism is
not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost ground due to globalisation without appropriate
compensation of its 'losers', and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies. The
world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.
From an energy point of view globalisation is a disaster. The insane level of fossil fuels
that this current world requires for transportation of necessities (food and clothing) is making
this world an unstable world. Ipso Facto.
We need a world where goods move little as possible (yep!) when smart ideas and technology
(medical, science, industry, yep that's essential) move as much as possible. Internet makes this
possible. This is no dream but a XXIth century reality.
Work – the big one – is required and done where and when it occurs. That is on all continents
if not in every country. Not in an insanely remote suburbs of Asia.
Those who believe that globalisation is bringing value to the world should reconsider their
views. The current globalisation has created both monopolies on a geopolitical ground, ie TV make
or shipbuilding in Asia.
Do you seriously believe that these new geographical and corporate monopolies does not
create the kind bad outcomes that traditional – country-centric ones – monopolies have in the
past?
Yves Smith can have nasty words when it comes to discussing massive trade surplus and policies
that supports them. That's my single most important motivation for reading this challenging blog,
by the way.
Another thing is that reliance on complex supply chains is risky. The book 1177 B.C.: The Year
Civilization Collapsed describes how the ancient Mediterranian civilization collapsed when the
supply chains stopped working.
Then there is the practical issue of workers having next to no bargaining power under globalization.
Do people really suppose that Mexican workers would be willing to strike so that their US counterparts,
already making ficew times as much money, would get a raise?
Is Finland somehow supposed to force the US and China to adopt similar worker rights and environmental
protections? No, globalization, no matter how you slice it,is a race to the bottom.
I do not agree with the article's conclusion either.
Reshoring would have 1 of 2 outcomes:
Lots of manufacturing jobs and a solid middle class. We may be looking at more than 20
percent total employment in manufacturing and more than 30 percent of our GDP in manufacturing.
If the robots take over, we still have a lot of manufacturing jobs. Japan for example has
the most robots per capita, yet they still maintain very large amounts of manufacturing employment.
It does not mean the end of manufacturing at all, having worked in manufacturing before.
Basically our elite sold us a bill of goods is why we lost manufacturing. Greed. Nothing
else.
The conclusion is the least important thing. Conclusions are just interpretations, afterthoughts,
divagations (which btw are often just sneaky ways to get your work published by TPTB, surreptitiously
inserting radical stuff under the noses of the guardians of orthodoxy).
The value of these reports is in providing hardcore statistical evidence and quantification
for something for which so many people have a gut feeling but just cann't prove it (although many
seem to think that just having a strong opinion is sufficient).
Yes, correct. Intuition is great for coming up with hypotheses, but it is important to test
them. And while a correlation isn't causation, it at least says the hypothesis isn't nuts on its
face.
In addition, studies like this are helpful in challenging the oft-made claim, particularly
in the US, that people who vote for nationalist policies are bigots of some stripe.
You are missing the transition costs, which will take ten years, maybe a generation.
America hasn't just gotten rid of the low level jobs. It has also gotten rid of supervisors
and factory managers. Those are skills you can't get back overnight. For US plants in Mexico,
you might have US managers there or be able to get special visas to let those managers come to
the US. But US companies have shifted a ton, and I meant a ton, to foreign subcontractors. Some
would put operations in the US to preserve access to US customers, but their managers won't speak
English. How do you make this work?
The only culture with demonstrated success in working with supposedly hopeless US workers is
the Japanese, who proved that with the NUMMI joint venture with GM in one of its very worst factories
(in terms of the alleged caliber of the workforce, as in many would show up for work drunk). Toyota
got the plant to function at better than average (as in lower) defect levels and comparable productivity
to its plants in Japan, which was light years better than Big Three norms.
I'm not sure any other foreign managers are as sensitive to detail and the fine points of working
conditions as the Japanese (having worked with them extensively, the Japanese hear frequencies
of power dynamics that are lost on Westerners. And the Chinese do not even begin to have that
capability, as much as they have other valuable cultural attributes).
That is really interesting about the Japanese sensitivity to detail and power dynamics. If
anyone has managed to describe this in any detail, I would love to read more, though I suppose
if their ability is alien to most Westerners the task of describing it might also be too much
to handle.
I lean more to ten years than a generation. And in the grand scheme of things, 10 years is
nothing.
The real issue is commitment. Very little manufacturing will be re-shored unless companies
are convinced that it is in their longterm interest to do so. Which means having a sense
that the US government is serious, and will continue to be serious, about penalizing off-shoring.
Regardless of Trump's bluster, which has so far only resulted in a handful of companies halting
future offshoring decisions (all to the good), we are nowhere close to that yet.
There is also what I've heard referred to as the "next bench" phenomenon, in which products
arise because someone designs a new product/process to solve a manufacturing problem. Unless one
has great foresight, the designer of the new product must be aware there is a problem to solve.
When a country is involved in manufacturing, the citizens employed will have exposure to
production problems and issues.
Sometimes the solution to these problems can lead to new products outside of one's main
business, for example the USA's Kingsford Charcoal arose from a scrap wood disposal problem that
Henry Ford had.
If one googles for "patent applications by countries" one gets these numbers, which could be
an indirect indication of some of the manufacturing shift from the USA to Asia.
Patent applications for the top 10 offices, 2014
1. China 928,177
2. US 578,802
3. Japan 325,989
4. South Korea 210,292
What is not captured in these numbers are manufacturing processes known as "trade secrets"
that are not disclosed in a patent. The idea that the USA can move move much of its manufacturing
overseas without long term harming its workforce and economy seems implausible to me.
While a design EE at HP, they brought in an author who had written about Toyota's lean design
method, which was currently the management hot button du jour. After his speech he took questions.
I asked "Would Toyota ever separate design from manufacturing?" as HP had done, shipping all manufacturing
to Asia. "No" was his answer.
In my experience, it is way too useful to have the line be able to easily call the designer
in question and have him come take a look at what his design is doing. HP tried to get around
that by sending part of the design team to Asia to watch the startup. Didn't work as well. And
when problems emerged later, it was always difficult to debug by remote control.
And BTW, after manufacturing went overseas, management told us for costing to assume "Labor
is free". Some level playing field.
Oh gawd! The man talks about the effects of globalization and says that the solution is a "a
more inclusive model of globalization"? Seriously? Furthermore he singles out Chinese imports
as the cause of people being pushed to the right. Yeah, right.
How about mass imports of cheap workers into western countries in the guise of emigrants
to push down worker's pay and gut things like unions. That factor played a decisive factor in
both the Brexit referendum and the US 2016 elections. Or the subsidized exportation of western
countries industrial equipment to third world countries, leaving local workers swinging in the
wind.
This study is so incomplete it is almost useless. The only thing that comes to mind to say
about this study is the phrase "Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" And what form
of appropriate compensation of its 'losers' would they suggest? Training for non-existent jobs?
Free moving fees to the east or west coast for Americans in flyover country? Subsidized emigration
fees to third world countries where life is cheaper for workers with no future where they are?
Nice try fellas but time to redo your work again until it is fit for a passing grade.
Aw jeez, mate – you've just hurt my feelings here. Take a look at the actual article again.
The data sets do not capture some of the most important factors in what they are saying. It
is like putting together a paper on how and why white men voted in the 2016 US elections as they
did – and forgetting to mention the effect of the rest of the voters involved.
Hey, here is an interesting thought experiment for you. How about we apply the scientific method
to the past 40 years of economic theory since models with actual data strike your fancy. If we
find that the empirical data does not support a theory such as the theory of economic neoliberalism,
we can junk it then and replace it with something that actually works then. So far as I know,
modern economics seems to be immune to scientific rigour in their methods unlike the real sciences.
Not all relevant factors need to be included for a statistical analysis to be valid, as long
as relevant ignored factors are randomized amongst the sampling units, but you know that of course.
Thanks for you kind words about the real sciences, we work hard to keep it real, but once again,
in all fairness, between you and me mate, is not all rigour, it is a lot more Feyerabend than
Popper.
What you say is entirely true. The trouble has always been to make sure that that statistical
analysis actually reflects the real world enough to make it valid. An example of where it all
falls apart can be seen in the political world when the pundits, media and all the pollsters assured
America that Clinton had it in the bag. It was only after the dust had settled that it was revealed
how bodgy the methodology used had been.
By the way, Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend sound very interesting so thanks for the heads
up. Have you heard of some of the material of another bloke called Mark Blyth at all? He has some
interesting observations to make on modern economic practices.
I had a similar reaction. This research was reinforcing info about everyone's resentment
over really bad distribution of wealth, as far as it went, but it was so unsatisfying and
I immediately thought of Blyth who laments the whole phylogeny of economics as more or less serving
the rich.
The one solution he offered up a while ago was (paraphrasing) 'don't sweat the deficit spending
because it is all 6s in the end' which is true if distribution doesn't stagnate. So as it stands
now, offshoring arms, legs and firstborns is like 'nothing to see here, please move on'. The suggestion
that we need a more inclusive form of global trade kind of begs the question. Made me uneasy too.
"Gut things like unions." How so? In my recent interaction with my apartment agency's preferred
contractors, random contractors not unionized, I experienced a 6 month-long disaster.
These construction workers bragged that in 2 weeks they would have the complete job done -
a reconstructed deck and sunroom. Verbatim quote: "Union workers complete the job and tear it
down to keep everyone paying." Ha Ha! What a laugh!
Only to have these same dudes keep saying "next week", "next week", "next week", "next week".
The work began in August and only was finished (not completely!) in late January. Sloppy crap!
Even the apartment agency head maintenance guy who I finally bitched at said "I guess good work
is hard to come by these days."
Of the non-union guys he hired.
My state just elected a republican governor who promised "right to work." This was just signed
into law.
Immigrants and Mexicans had nothing to do with it. They're not an impact in my city. "Right
to work" is nothing other than a way to undercut quality of work for "run-to-the-bottom competitive
pay."
Now I await whether my rent goes up to pay for this nonsense.
They look at the labor cost, assume someone can do it cheaper. They don't think it's that difficult.
Maybe it's not. The hard part of any and all construction work is getting it finished. Getting
started is easy. Getting it finished on time? Nah, you can't afford that.
I've noticed that the only people in favor of globalization are those whose jobs are not
under threat from it. Beyond that, I think the flood of cheap Chinese goods is actually helping
suppress populist anger by allowing workers whose wages are dropping in real value terms to maintain
the illusion of prosperity. To me, a more "inclusive" form of globalization would include replacing
every economist with a Chinese immigrant earning minimum wage. That way they'd get to "experience"
how awesome it is and the value of future economic analysis would be just as good.
I'm going to question a few of the author's assumptions.
First off, economic nationalism is not necessarily right wing. I would certainly classify
Bernie Sanders as an economic nationalist (against open borders and against "free" trade). Syriza
and Podemos could arguably be called rather ineffective economic nationalist parties. I would
say the whole ideology of social democracy is based on the Swedish nationalist concept of a "folkhem",
where the nation is the home and the citizens are the folk.
Secondly, when discussing the concept of economic nationalism and the nation of China, it would
be interesting to discuss how these two things go together. China has more billionaires than refugees
accepted in the past 20 years. Also it is practically impossible for a non Han Chinese person
to become a naturalized Chinese citizen. And when China buys Boeing aircraft, they wisely insist
on the production being done in China. A close look at Japan would yield similar results.
So China is Turmpism on steroids. Israel obviously is as well. Why do some nations get
to be blatantly Trumpist while for others these policies are strictly forbidden?
One way to look at Globalization is as an updated version of the post WW1 Versailles Treaty
which imposed reparations on a defeated Germany for all the harm they caused during the Great
War. The Globalized Versailles Treaty is aimed at the American and European working classes for
the crimes of colonialism, racism, slavery and any other bad things the 1st world has done to
the 3rd in the past.
Of course during colonialism the costs were socialized within colonizing states and so it was
the people of the colonial power who paid those costs that weren't borne by the colonial subjects
themselves, who of course paid dearly, and it was the oligarchic class that privatized the colonial
profits. But the 1st world oligarchs and their urban bourgeoisie are in strong agreement that
the deplorable working classes are to blame for systems that hurt working classes but powerfully
enriched the wealthy!
And so with the recent rebellions against Globalization, the 1st and 3rd world oligarchs are
convinced these are nothing more than the 1st world working classes attempting to shirk their
historic guilt debt by refusing to pay the rightful reparations in terms of standard of living
that workers deserve to pay for the crimes committed in the past by their wealthy co-nationals.
And yes, this applies to Bernie Sanders as well. During that iconic interview where Sanders
denounced open borders and pushed economic nationalism, the Neoliberal interviewer immediately
played the global guilt card in response.
Interesting. Another way to look at it is from the point of view of entropy and closed vs open
systems. Before globalisation the 1st world working classes enjoyed a high standard of living
which was possible because their system was relatively closed to the rest of the world. It was
a high entropy, strongly structured socio-economic arrangement, with a large difference in standard
of living between 1st world and 3rd world working classes. Once their system became more open
by virtue (or vice) of globalisation, entropy increased as commanded by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
so the 1st world and 3rd world working classes became more equalised. The socio-economic arrangements
became less structured. This means for the Trumpening kind of politicians it is a steep uphill
battle, to increase entropy again.
Yes, I agree, but if we step back in history a bit we can see the colonial period as a sort
of reverse globalization which perhaps portends a bit of optimism for the Trumpening.
I use the term open and closed borders but these are not precise. What I am really saying is
that open borders does not allow a country to filter out negative flows across their border. Closed
borders does allow a nation to impose a filter. So currently the US has more open borders (filters
are frowned upon) and China has closed borders (they can filter out what they don't want) despite
the fact that obviously China has plenty of things crossing its border.
During colonialism the 3rd world had a form of open borders imposed on it by the colonial
powers, where the 3rd world lost control of who what crossed their borders while the 1st world
themselves maintained a closed border mercantilist regime of strict filters. So the anti-colonialist
movement was a form of Trumpist economic nationalism where the evil foreigners were given the
boot and the nascent nations applied filters to their borders.
So the 3rd world to some extent (certainly in China at least) was able to overcome entropy
and regain control of their borders. You are correct in that it will be an uphill struggle for
the 1st world to repeat this trick. In the ideal world both forms of globalization (colonialism
and the current form) would be sidelined and all nations would be allowed to use the border filters
they think would best protect the prosperity of their citizens.
Another good option would be a version of the current globalization but where the losers are
the wealthy oligarchs themselves and the winners are the working classes. It's hard to imagine
it's easy if you try!
What's interesting about the concept of entropy is that it stands in contradiction to the concept
of perpetual progress. I'm sure there is some sort of thesis, antithesis, synthesis solution to
these conflicting concepts.
To overcome an entropy current requires superb skill commanding a large magnitude of work applied
densely on a small substratum (think of the evolution of the DNA, the internal combustion engine).
I believe the Trumpening laudable effort and persuasion would have a chance of success in a country
the size of The Netherlands, or even France, but the USA, the largest State machinery in the world,
hardly. When the entropy current flooded the Soviet system the solution came firstly in the form
of shrinkage.
We need to think more about it, a lot more, in order to succeed in this 1st world uphill struggle
to repeat the trick. I am pretty sure that as Pierre de Fermat famously claimed about his alleged
proof, the solution "is too large to fit in the margins of this book".
My little entropy epiphany goes like this: it's like boxes – containers, if you will, of energy
or money, or trade goods, the flow of which is best slowed down so everybody can grab some. Break
it all down, decentralize it and force it into containers which slow the pace and share the wealth.
Nationalism (my opinion) can do this – economic nationalism. And of course other
people think oh gawd, not that again – it's so inefficient for my investments- I can't get fast
returns that way but that's just the point.
Don't you mean "It was a LOWER entropy (as in "more ordered"), strongly structured socio-economic
arrangement, with a large difference in standard of living between 1st world"?
The entropy increased as a consequence of human guided globalization.
Of course, from a thermodynamic standpoint, the earth is not a closed system as it is continually
flooded with new energy in the form of solar radiation.
The Globalized Versailles Treaty -- Permit me a short laughter . The terms of the crippling
treaty were dictated by the victors largely on insecurities of France.
The crimes of the 1st against the 3rd go on even now- the only difference is that some of the
South like China and India are major nuclear powers now.
The racist crimes in the US are even more flagrant- the Blacks whose labour as slaves allowed
for cotton revolution enabling US capitalists to ride the industrial horse are yet to be rehabilitated
, Obama or no Obama. It is a matter of profound shame.
The benefits of Globalization have gone only to the cartel of 1st and 3rd World Capitalists.
And they are very happy as the lower classes keep fighting. Very happy indeed.
The gorgon cry of the past is all over the present , including in " unsuspecting" paying folks
of today! Blacks being brought to US as slave agricultural labour was Globalisation. Their energy
vibrated the machinery of Economics subsequently. What Nationalism and where is it hiding pray?
Bogus analysis here , yes.
The reigning social democratic parties in Europe today are not the Swedish traditional parties
of yesteryear they have morphed into neoliberal austerians committed to globalization and export
driven economic models at any cost (CETA vote recently) and most responsible for the economic
collapse in the EU
I wonder they chose Chinese imports as the cause of the right-wing shift, when they themselves
admit that the shift started in the 1990s. At that time, there were few Chinese imports and China
was not even part of the WHO.
If they are thinking of movements like the Lega Nord and Vlaams Blok, the reasons are clearly
not to be found in imports, but in immigration, the welfare state and lack of national homogeneity,
perceived or not.
And the beginnings of the precariat.
So it is not really the globalization of commerce that did it, but the loss of relevance of
national and local identities.
Correlation does not imply causation, but lack of correlation definitely excludes it.
The Lega was formed in the 1980s, Vlaams Blok at the end of the '70s. They both had their best
days in the 1990s. Chinese imports at the time were insignificant.
I cannot find the breakdown of Chinese imports per EU country, but here are the total Chinese
exports since 1983:
China was not a significant exporter until the 2001 inclusion in WTO: it cannot possibly
have caused populist uprisings in Italy and Belgium in the 1990s. It was probably too early even
for Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, who was killed in 2002, Le Pen's electoral success in the
same year, Austria's FPOE in 1999, and so on.
The timescales just do not match. Whatever was causing "populism", it was not Chinese imports,
and I can think of half a dozen other, more likely causes.
Furthermore, the 1980s and 1990s were something of an industrial renaissance for Lombardy and
Flanders: hardly the time to worry about Chinese imports.
And if you look at the map. the country least affected by the import shock (France) is the
one with the strongest populist movement (Le Pen).
People try to conflate Trump_vs_deep_state and Brexit with each other, then try to conflate this "anglo-saxon"
populism with previous populisms in Europe, and try to deduce something from the whole exercise.
That "something" is just not there and the exercise is pointless. IMHO at least.
European regionalism is often the result of the rise of the EU as a new, alternative national
government in the eyes of the disgruntled regions. Typically there are three levels of government,
local, regional (states) and national. With the rise of the EU we have a fourth level, supra-national.
But to the Flemish, Scottish, Catalans, etc, they see the EU as a potential replacement for the
National-level governments they currently are unhappy being under the authority of.
Capitalism should be evolving but it went backwards. Keynesian capitalism evolved from the
free market capitalism that preceded it. The absolute faith in markets had been laid low by 1929
and the Great Depression.
After the Keynesian era we went back to the old free market capitalism of neoclassical economics.
Instead of evolving, capitalism went backwards. We had another Wall Street Crash that has laid
low the once vibrant global economy and we have entered into the new normal of secular stagnation.
In the 1930s, Irving Fisher studied the debt deflation caused by debt saturated economies. Today
only a few economists outside the mainstream realise this is the problem today.
In the 1930s, Keynes realized only fiscal stimulus would pull the US out of the Great Depression,
eventually the US implemented the New Deal and it started to recover. Today we use monetary policy
that keeps asset prices up but cannot overcome the drag of all that debt in the system and its
associated repayments.
In the 1920s, they relied on debt based consumption, not realizing how consumers will eventually
become saturated with debt and demand will fail. Today we rely on debt based consumption again,
Greece consumed on debt. until it maxed out on debt and collapsed.
In the 1930s Keynes realized, income was just as important as profit as this produced a
sustainable system that does not rely on debt to maintain demand. Keynes was involved with
the Bretton-Woods agreement after the Second World War and recycled the US surplus to Europe to
restore trade when Europe lay in ruins. Europe could rebuild itself and consume US products, everyone
benefitted.
Today there are no direct fiscal transfers within the Euro-zone and it is polarizing. No one
can see the benefits of rebuilding Greece, to allow it to carry on consuming the goods from surplus
nations and it just sinks further and further into the mire. There is a lot to be said for capitalism
going forwards rather than backwards and making the same old mistakes a second time.
The ECB didn't listen and killed Greece with austerity and is laying low the Club-Med nations.
Someone who knows what they are doing, after studying the Great Depression and Japan after 1989.
Let's keep him out of the limelight; he has no place on the ship of fools running the show.
DEBT on Debt with QEs+ ZRP ( borrowing from future) was the 'solution' by Bernanke to mask
the 2008 crisis and NOT address the underlying structural reforms in the Banking and the Financial
industry. He was part of the problem for housing problem and occurred under his watch! He just
kicked the can with explosive credit growth ( but no corresponding growth in the productive Economy!)and
easy money!
We have a 'Mother of all bubbles' at our door step. Just matter of time when it will BLOW and
NOT if! There is record levels of DEBT ( both sovereign, public and private) in the history of
mankind, all over the World.
DEBT has been used as a panacea for all the financial problems by CBers including Bernanke!
Fed's balance sheet was than less 1 Trillion in 2008 ( for all the years of existence of our Country!)
but now over 3.5 Trillions and climbing!
Kicking the can down the road is like passing the buck to some one (future generations!). And
you call that solution by Mr. Bernanke? Wow!
Will they say again " No one saw this coming'? when next one descends?
The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their
track record.
The FED presided over the dot.com bust and 2008, unaware that they were happening and of their
consequences. Alan Greenspan spots irrational exuberance in the markets in 1996 and passes comment.
As the subsequent dot.com boom and housing booms run away with themselves he says nothing.
The money supply is flat in the recession of the early 1990s.
Then it really starts to take off as the dot.com boom gets going which rapidly morphs into
the US housing boom, courtesy of Alan Greenspan's loose monetary policy.
When M3 gets closer to the vertical, the black swan is coming and you have an out of control
credit bubble on your hands (money = debt).
We can only presume the FED wasn't looking at the US money supply, what on earth were they
doing?
The BoE is aware of how money is created from debt and destroyed by repayments of that debt.
"Although commercial banks create money through lending, they cannot do so freely without
limit. Banks are limited in how much they can lend if they are to remain profitable in a competitive
banking system."
The BoE's statement was true, but is not true now as banks can securitize bad loans and get
them off their books. Before 2008, banks were securitising all the garbage sub-prime mortgages,
e.g. NINJA mortgages, and getting them off their books. Money is being created freely and without
limit, M3 is going exponential before 2008.
Bad debt is entering the system and no one is taking any responsibility for it. The credit
bubble is reflected in the money supply that should be obvious to anyone that cares to look.
Ben Bernanke studied the Great Depression and doesn't appear to have learnt very much.
Irving Fisher studied the Great Depression in the 1930s and comes up with a theory of debt
deflation. A debt inflated asset bubble collapses and the debt saturated economy sinks into debt
deflation. 2008 is the same as 1929 except a different asset class is involved.
1929 – Margin lending into US stocks
2008 – Mortgage lending into US housing
Hyman Minsky carried on with his work and came up with the "Financial Instability Hypothesis"
in 1974.
Steve Keen carried on with their work and spotted 2008 coming in 2005. We can see what Steve
Keen saw in 2005 in the US money supply graph above.
The independent Central Banks that don't know what they are doing as can be seen from their
track record.
Good to see studies confirming what was already known.
This apparently surprised:
On the contrary, as globalisation threatens the success and survival of entire industrial
districts, the affected communities seem to have voted in a homogeneous way, regardless of
each voter's personal situation.
It is only surprising for people not part of communities, those who are part of communities
see how it affects people around them and solidarity with the so called 'losers' is then shown.
Seems like radical right is the preferred term, it does make it more difficult to sympathize
with someone branded as radical right . The difference seems to be between the radical liberals
vs the conservative. The radical liberals are too cowardly to propose the laws they want, they
prefer to selectively apply the laws as they see fit. Either enforce the laws or change the laws,
anything else is plain wrong.
Socialism for the upper classes, capitalism for the lower classes? That will turn out well.
Debt slaves and wage slaves will revolt. That is all the analysis the OP requires. The upper class
will respond with suppression, not policy reversal every time. Socialism = making everyone equally
poor (obviously not for the upper classes who benefit from the arrangement).
Regrettably today we have socialism for the wealthy, with all the benefits of gov regulations,
sympathetic courts and legislatures etc. etc.
Workers are supposed to take care for themselves and the devil take the hind most. How many
workers get fired vs the 1%, when there is a failure in the company plan?
The Romans are the basis. Patricians, Equites and Plebs. Most of us here are clearly plebeian.
Time to go place some bets, watch the chariot races and gladiatorial fights, and get my bread
subsidy. Ciao.
Globalization created winners and losers throughout the world. The winners liked it, the losers
didn't. Democracy is based on the support of the majority.
The majority in the East were winners. The majority in the West were losers.
The Left has maintained its support of neoliberal globalisation in the West. The Right has
moved on. There has been a shift to the Right. Democracy is all about winners and losers and whether
the majority are winning or losing. It hasn't changed.
Globalization( along with communication -internet and transportation) made the Labor wage arbitration,
easy in favor of capital ( Multi-Nationals). Most of the jobs gone overseas will NEVER come back.
Robotic revolution will render the remaining jobs, less and less!
The 'new' Economy by passed the majority of lower 80-90% and favored the top 10%. The Losers
and the Winners!
80-90% of Bonds and Equities ( at least in USA) are owned by top 10 %. 0.7% own 45% of
global wealth. 8 billionaires own more than 50% of wealth than that of bottom 50% in our Country!
The Rich became richer!
The tension between Have and Have -Nots has just begun, as Marx predicted!
I think it's about time that we stopped referring to opposition to globalization as a product
or policy of the "extreme right". It would be truer to say that globalization represents a temporary,
and now fading, triumph of certain ideas about trade and movement of people and capital which
have always existed, but were not dominant in the past. Fifty years ago, most mainstream political
parties were "protectionist" in the sense the word is used today. Thirty years ago, protectionism
was often seen as a left)wing idea, to preserve standards of living and conditions of employment
(Wynne Godley and co). Today, all establishment political parties in the West have swallowed neoliberal
dogma, so the voters turn elsewhere, to parties outside the mainstream. Often, it's convenient
politically to label them "extreme right", although in Europe some left-wing parties take basically
the same position. If you ignore peoples' interests, they won't vote for you. Quelle surprise!
as Yves would say.
Yes, there are many reasons to be skeptical of too much globalization such as energy considerations.
I think another interesting one is exchange rates.
One of the important concepts of MMT is the importance of having a flexible exchange rate to
have full power over your currency. This is fine as far as it goes but tends to put hard currencies
against soft currencies where a hard currency can be defined as one that has international authority/acceptance.
Having flexible exchange rates also opens up massive amounts of financial speculation relative
to fluctuations of these currencies against each other and trying to protect against these fluctuations.
""Keynes' proposal of the bancor was to put a barrier between national currencies, that is
to have a currency of account at the global level. Keynes warned that free trade, flexible exchange
rates and free movement of capital globally were incompatible with maintaining full employment
at the local level""
""Sufficiency provisioning also means that trade would be discouraged rather than encouraged.""
Local currencies can work very well locally to promote employment but can have trouble when
they reach out to get resources outside of their currency space especially if they have a soft
currency. Global sustainability programs need to take a closer look at how to overcome this sort
of social injustice. (Debt or Democracy)
As has already been pointed out so eloquently here in the comments section, economic nationalism
is not necessarily the preserve of the right, nor is it necessarily the same thing as nationalism.
In the UK the original, most vociferous objectors to EEC membership in the 70s (now the EU)
were traditionally the Left, on the basis that it would gradually erode labour rights and devalue
the cost of labour in the longer term. Got that completely wrong obviously .
In the same way that global trade has become synonymous with globalisation, the immigration
debate has been hijacked and cynically conflated with free movement of (mainly low cost, unskilled)
labour and race when they are all VERY different divisive issues.
The other point alluded to in the comments above is the nature of free trade generally. The
accepted (neoliberal) wisdom being that 'collateral damage' is unfortunate but inevitable, but
it is pretty much an unstoppable or uncontrollable force for the greater global good, and the
false dichotomy persists that you either embrace it fully or pull up all the drawbridges with
nothing in between.
One of the primary reasons that some competing sectors of some Western economies have done
so badly out of globalisation is that they have adhered to 'free market principles' whilst other
countries, particularly China, clearly have not with currency controls, domestic barriers to trade,
massive state subsidies, wage suppression etc
The China aspect is also fascinating when developed nations look at the uncomfortable 'morality
of global wealth distribution' often cited by proponents of globalisation as one of their wider
philanthropic goals. Bless 'em. What is clear is that highly populated China and most of its people,
from the bottom to the top, has been the primary beneficiaries of this global wealth redistribution,
but the rest of the developing world's poor clearly not quite so much.
The map on it's own, in terms of the English one time industrial Midlands & North West being
shown as an almost black hole, is in itself a kind of " Nuff Said ".
It is also apart from London, where the vast bulk of immigrants have settled.
The upcoming bye-election in Stoke, which could lead to U-Kip taking a once traditionally always
strong Labour seat, is right in the middle of that dark cloud.
The problem from the UK 's position, I suggest, is that autarky is not a viable proposition
so economic nationalism becomes a two-edged sword. Yes, of course, the UK can place restrictions
on imports and immigration but there will inevitably be retaliation and they will enter a game
of beggar my neighbour. The current government talks of becoming a beacon for free trade. If we
are heading to a more protectionist world, that can only end badly IMHO.
Unless we get some meaningful change in thinking on a global scale, I think we are heading
somewhere very dark whatever the relative tinkering with an essentially broken system.
The horse is long gone, leaving a huge pile of shit in it's stable.
As for what might happen, I do not know, but I have the impression that we are at the end of
a cycle.
This is quite interesting, but only part of the story. Interestingly the districts/provinces
suffering the most from the chinese import shock are usually densely populated industrial regions
of Europe. The electoral systems in Europe (I think all, but I did not check) usually do not weight
equally each district, favouring those less populated, more rural (which by the way tend to be
very conservative but not so nationalistic). These differences in vote weigthing may have somehow
masked the effect seen in this study if radical nationalistic rigth wing votes concentrate in
areas with lower weigthed value of votes. For instance, in Spain, the province of Soria is mostly
rural and certainly less impacted by chinese imports compared with, for instance, Madrid. But
1 vote in Soria weigths the same as 4 votes in Madrid in number of representatives in the congress.
This migth, in part, explain why in Spain, the radical rigth does not have the same power as in
Austria or the Netherlands. It intuitively fits the hypothesis of this study.
Nevertheless, similar processes can occur in rural areas. For instance, when Spain entered
the EU, french rural areas turned nationalistic against what they thougth could be a wave of agricultural
imports from Spain. Ok, agricultural globalization may have less impact in terms of vote numbers
in a given country but it still can be politically very influential. In fact spanish entry more
that 30 years ago could still be one of the forces behind Le Penism.
All this statistical math and yada yada to explain a rise in vote for radical right from 3%
in 1985 to 5% now on average? And only a 0.7% marginal boost if your the place really getting
hammmered by imports from China? If I'm reading it right, that is, while focusing on Figure 2.
The real "shock" no pun intended, is the vote totals arent a lot higher everywhere.
Then the Post concludes with reference to a "surge in support" - 3% to 5% or so over 30 years
is a surge? The line looks like a pretty steady rise over 3 decades.
Maybe I'm missing sommething here.
Also what is this thing they're callling an "Open World" of the past 30 years? And why is that
in danger from more balanced trade? It makes no sense. Even back in the 60s and 70s people could
go alll over the world for vacations. Or at least most places they coould go. If theh spent their
money they'd make friends. Greece even used to be a goood place people went and had fun on a beach.
I think this one is a situation of math runing amuck. Math running like a thousand horses over
a hill trampling every blade of grass into mud.
I bet the China factor is just a referent for an entire constellatio of forces that probably
don't lend themselves (no pun intended) partiicularly well to social science and principal component
analysis - as interesting as that is for those who are interested in that kind of thing (which
I am acctually).
Also, I wouldn't call this "free trade". Not that the authors do either, but trade means reciprocity
not having your livelihood smashed the like a pinata at Christmas with all your candy eaten by
your "fellow countrymen". I wouldn't call that "trade". It's something else.
Regarding your first point, it is a small effect but it is all due to the China imports impact,
you have to add the growth of these parties due to other reasons such as immigration to get the
full picture of their growth. Also I think the recent USA election was decided by smaller percentage
advantages in three States?
Globalisation is nothing but free trade extended to the entire world. Free trade is a tool
used to prevent competition. By flooding countries with our cheaper exports, they do not develop
the capacity to compete with us by making their own widgets. So, why are we shocked when those
other countries return the favor and when they get the upper hand, we respond in a protectionist
way? It looks to me that those countries who are now competing with us in electronics, automobiles,
etc. only got to develop those industries in their countries because of protectionism.
Refugees in great numbers are a symptom of globalization, especially economic refugees but
also political and environmental ones. This has strained the social order in many countries that
have accepted them in and it's one of the central issues that the so-called "right" is highlighting.
It is no surprise there has been an uproar over immigration policy in the US which is an issue
of class as much as foreign policy because of the disenfranchisement of large numbers of workers
on both sides of the equation - those who lost their jobs to outsourcing and those who emigrated
due to the lack of decent employment opportunities in their own countries.
We're seeing the tip of the iceberg. What will happen when the coming multiple environmental
calamities cause mass starvation and dislocation of coastal populations? Walls and military forces
can't deter hungry, desperate, and angry people.
The total reliance and gorging on fossil energy by western countries, especially the US, has
mandated military aggression to force compliance in many areas of the world. This has brought
a backlash of perpetual terrorism. We are living under a dysfunctional system ruled by sociopaths
whose extreme greed is leading to world war and environmental collapse.
Who created the REFUGEE PROBLEMS in the ME – WEST including USA,UK++
Obama's DRONE program kept BOMBING in SEVEN Countries killing innocents – children and women!
All in the name of fighting Terrorism. Billions of arms to sale Saudi Arabia! Wow!
Where were the Democrats and the Resistance and Women's march? Hypocrites!
Globalisation has caused a surge in support for nationalist and radical right political
platforms.
Just a reminder that nationalism doesn't have to be associated with the radical right. The left
is not required to reject it, especially when it can be understood as basically patriotism, expressed
as solidarity with all of your fellow citizens.
Trump's withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership seems to be a move in that direction.
Well, that may be true as far as Trump's motivations are concerned, but a major component (the
most important?) of the TPP was strong restraint of trade, a protectionist measure, by intellectual
property owners.
Yet, a return to protectionism is not likely to solve the problems of those who have lost
ground due to globalisation without appropriate compensation of its 'losers'
Japan has long been 'smart' protectionist, and this has helped prevent the 'loser' problem, in
part because Japan, being nationalist, makes it a very high priority to create/maintain a society
in which almost all Japanese are more or less middle class. So, it is a fact that protectionism
has been and can be associated with more egalitarian societies, in which there are few 'losers'
like we see in the West. But the U.S. and most Western countries have a long way to go if they
decide to make the effort to be more egalitarian. And, of course, protectionism alone is not enough
to make most of the losers into winners again. You'll need smart skills training, better education
all around, fewer low-skill immigrants, time, and, most of all strong and long-term commitment
to making full employment at good wages national priority number one.
and is bound to harm growth especially in emerging economies.
Growth has been week since the 2008, even though markets are as free as they've ever been. Growth
requires a lot more consumers with willingness and cash to spend on expensive, high-value-added
goods. So, besides the world finally escaping the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, exporting
countries need prosperous consumers either at home or abroad, and greater economic security. And
if a little bit of protectionism generates more consumer prosperity and economic stability, exporting
countries might benefit overall.
The world rather needs a more inclusive model of globalisation.
Well, yes, the world needs more inclusivity, but globalization doesn't need to be part of the
picture. Keep your eyes on the prize: inclusivity/equality, whether latched onto nationally, regionally,
'internationally' or globally, any which way is fine! But prioritization of globalization over
those two is likely a victory for more inequality, for more shoveling of our wealth up to the
ruling top 1%.
"... In the conclusion, he says "I argued that it is the roach motel of currencies. Like the Hotel
California of the song: you can check in, but you can't check out." To be precise, that's true of the
Roach Motel (see here , if you don't know what that's all about), but, according to the Eagles, you
can actually check out of the Hotel California, though you can never leave (hmm... sounds kind of like
"Brexit"...). ..."
"... In any case, the fact it hangs together because eurozone members feel trapped by the costs
of exit is hardly an affirmative case for the single currency. ..."
Barry Eichengreen column headlined "Don't Sell the Euro Short. It's Here to Stay"
He writes:
Two forms of glue hold the euro together. First, the economic costs of break-up would be great.
The minute investors heard that Greece was seriously contemplating reintroducing the drachma with
the purpose of depreciating it against the euro, or against a "new Deutsche mark," they would
wire all their money to Frankfurt. Greece would experience the mother of all banking crises. The
"new Deutsche mark" would then shoot through the roof, destroying Germany's export industry.
More generally, those predicting, or advocating, the euro's demise tend to underestimate the
technical difficulties of reintroducing national currencies.
In the conclusion, he says "I argued that it is the roach motel of currencies. Like the Hotel
California of the song: you can check in, but you can't check out." To be precise, that's true of
the Roach Motel (see here
, if you don't know what that's all about), but,
according to the Eagles,
you can actually check out of the Hotel California, though you can never leave (hmm... sounds
kind of like "Brexit"...).
In any case, the fact it hangs together because eurozone members feel trapped by the costs
of exit is hardly an affirmative case for the single currency. In Greece's case, its hard to
believe that the costs of exit really would have been higher than the costs of staying; this
FT Alphablog post by Matthew Klein pointed out this figure from the
IMF's Article IV report :
The fact that the eurozone rolls on with no sign that a depression in one of its smaller constituent
economies is enough to bring about a fundamental change is disturbing. It wouldn't be able to ignore
an election of Marine LePen as President of France -
Gavyn Davies
considers the consequences of that.
"The fact that the eurozone rolls on with no sign that a depression in one of its smaller
constituent economies is enough to bring about a fundamental change is disturbing."
Why so? Isn't it in fact encouraging, a sign that the eurozone can withstand such problems
(especially a problem in one of its smaller economies)? There's scant reason to think it would
be a good thing if the eurozone opted for "fundamental change" every time one of its constituent
nations experienced a problem.
Fair enough - it is true that the Greek crisis didn't cause the euro to break up at least.
But I think what happened in Greece (and Ireland to an extent) is more than a local problem; it
revealed a fundamental design flaw which they haven't fully confronted - the lack of a "banking
union". From the outset, economists doubted whether the euro area met the traditional criteria
for an optimum currency area (OCA), and those issues are relevant, but I think Greece shows that
a banking union (i.e., shared lender of last resort, banking regulation and deposit insurance)
is necessary to make it work. I.e., if Greek banks were european banks, the bank-sovereign "doom
loop" could be circumvented. The euro area needs a way for countries to go bankrupt without bringing
their banks down with them.
I tend to agree with you regarding the necessity for a "banking union"; not having one is
indeed a design flaw, and no, it hasn't been confronted. Does that mean the eurozone's days are
numbered? Could be, but of course we won't know for certain-sure until the breakup does (or doesn't)
happen. So it goes.
...So my question for the degrowth community is whether declining investment is an occasion
for celebration? Does this mean that economic policy is actually getting something right?
Here's one answer I won't accept: we don't care about growth in general, just growth of bad
stuff, like fossil fuels, accumulation of waste, destruction of coastlines, etc. That isn't a
degrowth position. Everyone wants more of the good and less of the bad, however they define it.
I'm in favor of only toothsome pizza crusts and I'm dead set against the soggy kind, but that's
not the same as being on a diet.
This is a practical, policy-relevant question. There are many smart economists trying to understand
the investment slump so they can devise policies to turn it around. You'll notice this concern
is prominent in the writing on increasing industrial concentration, the shareholder value obsession,
globalization and outsourcing, and other topics. The goal of these researchers is to reform corporate
and market structure in order to restore a higher rate of investment, among other things. That
of course would tend to accelerate economic growth. So what's the degrowth position on all this?
Should economists be looking for additional measures to discourage investment?
Again, please don't tell me that it's just investment in "bads" that needs to be discouraged.
That's a given across the entire spectrum of economic rationality (which is admittedly somewhat
narrower than the political spectrum). In the aggregate, is it good that investment is trending
down?
My own view, as readers of this blog will know (see here and here), is that degrowth is a suicide
cult masquerading as a political position. I'm pretty sure that radically transforming our economy
to make it sustainable will involve a tremendous amount of investment and new production, and
it seems clear to me that boosting living standards through more and better consumption is both
politically and ethically essential. But I could be wrong. I would sincerely appreciate intelligent
arguments from the degrowth side.
[Asked and answered, sort of. Degrowth or beneficial degrowth is relative to what metrics (i.e.,
resources rather than capital) and realistically a far enough ways from where we are now to be
moot.]
I think this is too simplistic. There is (and has always been) a growing realization that more
is not always better. This insight is not uniform for any given geographic or socioeconomic population
group, but often informed by how one relates to the economic process (which correlates with age),
individually as well as at the peer group level.
When a larger group is exposed to a situation where the trappings of success are hard to obtain
(e.g. younger people coming out of school/college into a bad job market), or where there is an
appearance that new technology/gadgets may be initially exciting but don't really translate into
better quality of life or better effectiveness of work/activities ("productivity"), or even degrade
either (more typical for older people who are not seeing new gadgets/technologies for the first
time?), then rejection of whatever is proclaimed as "improvement" can become socially acceptable.
I'm also at the point where I don't really want new stuff, because my impression is that it
is generally not better than the previous edition, or if better, then not better in a write-home-about-it
way. And the realization many acquisitions create more liabilities than benefits in the long term
(for one thing, accumulation of junk and need to throw out "something" - which I may not really
want to throw out).
Trump Chooses H.R. McMaster as National
Security Adviser
https://nyti.ms/2lo3mNK
NYT - PETER BAKER - February 20, 2017
WASHINGTON - President Trump picked Lt. Gen. H.R.
McMaster, a widely respected military strategist, as his new
national security adviser on Monday, calling him "a man of
tremendous talent and tremendous experience."
Mr. Trump made the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago getaway
in Palm Beach, Fla., where he has been interviewing
candidates to replace Michael T. Flynn, who was forced out
after withholding information from Vice President Mike Pence
about a call with Russia's ambassador.
The choice continued Mr. Trump's reliance on high-ranking
military officers to advise him on national security. Mr.
Flynn was a retired three-star general and Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis is a retired four-star general. His first choice
to replace Mr. Flynn, who turned the job down, and two other
finalists were current or former senior officers as well.
Shortly before announcing his appointment, Mr. Trump wrote
on Twitter: "Meeting with Generals at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Very interesting!"
General McMaster is seen as one of the Army's leading
intellectuals, first making a name for himself with a searing
critique of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for their performance
during the Vietnam War and later criticizing the way
President George W. Bush's administration went to war in
Iraq.
As a commander, he was credited with demonstrating how a
different counterterrorism strategy could defeat insurgents
in Iraq, providing the basis for the change in approach that
Gen. David H. Petraeus adopted to shift momentum in a war
that the United States was on the verge of losing.
A problem with today's views about globalization is that they look backward rather than forward.
The future's globalization is much different from the past's globalization. In particular, growing
nationalism is the future in the places, such as China, that have benefited from globalization.
By that I mean China is beginning to produce goods for China firms rather than for western firms
to compete with goods produced for western (American) firms including goods produced in China
for western firms.
It's a much different dynamic than what we have experienced in the past 30 years. And the response
to the new globalization should (and will) be much different.
Ironically, Trump's views about globalization come closer to what will be the response as western
firms adjust to the new globalization. Is Trump that smart? No, it's just that everybody else
is that dumb.
"... The revival of nationalism in western Europe, which began in the 1990s, has been associated
with increasing support for radical right parties. This column uses trade and election data to show
that the radical right gets its biggest electoral boost in regions most exposed to Chinese exports.
Within these regions communities vote homogenously, whether individuals work in affected industries
or not. ..."
"... "Chinese imports" is only an expression, or correlate, of something else - the neoliberal YOYO
principle and breakdown/deliberate destruction of social cohesion ..."
"... As a side effect, this removes the collective identity, and increased tribalism is the compensation
- a large part it is an attempt to find/associate with a group identity, which of course gives a large
boost to readily available old identities, which were in the past (ab)used by nationalist movements,
largely for the same reasons. ..."
The revival of nationalism in western Europe, which began in the 1990s, has been associated
with increasing support for radical right parties. This column uses trade and election data to
show that the radical right gets its biggest electoral boost in regions most exposed to Chinese
exports. Within these regions communities vote homogenously, whether individuals work in affected
industries or not.
"Chinese imports" is only an expression, or correlate, of something else - the neoliberal
YOYO principle and breakdown/deliberate destruction of social cohesion.
As a side effect, this removes the collective identity, and increased tribalism is the
compensation - a large part it is an attempt to find/associate with a group identity, which of
course gives a large boost to readily available old identities, which were in the past (ab)used
by nationalist movements, largely for the same reasons.
It seems to be quite apparent to me that the loss of national/local identity has not (initially?)
promoted nationalist movements advocating a stronger national identity narrative, but a "rediscovery"
of regional identities - often based on or similar to the geography of former kingdoms or principalities
prior to national unification, or more local municipal structures (e.g. local administrations,
business, or interest groups promoting a historical narrative of a municipal district as the village
or small town that it descended from, etc. - with the associated idyllic elements).
In many cases these historical identity narratives had always been undercurrents, even when
the nation state was strong.
And I mean strong not in the military or executive strength sense, but accepted as legitimate
and representing the population and its interests.
In these days, national goverments and institutions (state/parties) have been largely discredited,
not least due to right wing/elite propaganda (and of course due to observed corruption promoted
from the same side).
I'm not aware that either have discredited any deep state (BTW which Clinton?). The first thing
I would ask for is clarification what you mean by "deep state" - can you provide a usable definition?
Obama has rejected calls for going after US torturers ("we want to move past this").
And if you don't know where the 6 months of innuendo about the Russians comes from since Aug
16 you are reading the treasonous agitprop from the democrat wind machine centered in NY, Boston
and LA.
I'm not sure this answers my question, and it seems to accuse me of something I have not said
or implied (taking treason lightly) - or perhaps cautioning me against such?
Are you willing to define the terms you are discussing? (Redirecting me to a google search
etc. will not address my question. How exactly do you define "deep state"? You can quote from
the internet of course.)
From a previous life I know a concept of "a state within the state" (concretely referring to
the East German Stasi and similar services in other "communist" countries in concept but only
vaguely in the details). That is probably related to this, but I don't want to base any of this
on speculation and unclear terms.
1) Mexican workers are paid ~$1 an
hour and US workers doing the same work are paid ~$13 hour
and US plants are closing and moving to Mexico
and
2) ..."But some companies that produce goods in Mexico say
there's no going back to the U.S. That includes Delphi.
The company just announced a plan for more layoffs in
Warren, where only 1,500 employees remain.
Speaking at Barclay's Global Automotive Conference in New
York in December, Delphi's chief financial officer Joe
Massaro explained what he thought would happen to Delphi
under several Trump trade scenarios.
If Trump were to close the border with Mexico outright,
"in less than a week, all the people who voted for him in
Michigan and Ohio would be out of work," Massaro argued,
underscoring the fact that many factories in the U.S.,
including car makers in Detroit, depend on parts made in
Mexico.
If the United States were to withdraw from NAFTA and start
taxing imports from Mexico again, Delphi would continue doing
business in Mexico, he said. The company would pass on the
extra cost to its suppliers or to consumers, or would find a
way to reduce its production costs - which could mean layoffs
or salary cuts in Mexico."...
Trump can't fix that discrepancy in worker pay. Reagan's
so-called Free Trade began a race to the bottom for US
workers. It was known and discussed at the time. Reagan and
the Republican Party did not stand up for US workers and
neither did the Democrats in the day. Workers pay was
bartered off for cheaper goods to be bought at our stores.
That's the bargain made by Wall Street and D.C. and accepted
by American Workers who liked paying less at the store, not
realizing it meant they would be paid less - eventually.
And they certainly never dreamed it meant that in 20+
years their jobs would disappear overseas too.
"... Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture a Trump scandal ..."
"... Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice? ..."
"... FakeStream Media ..."
"... The very Fake Media has met their match ..."
Pete Hegseth and Jesse Watters discuss the bitter establishment's desperation to manufacture
a Trump scandal
TheBase1aransas 3 minutes ago
Alvina I think people that believe in freedom is not only the Best thing, but what built it.
We finally have Trump to speak for us.
Christine Lesch 4 hours ago
McCains a shumuck
Herbert Stewart 11 minutes ago
@Christine Lesch
I feel sorry for Arizona they are stuck with this guy. he needs to change parties
he had his turn and LOST1 america first!
Geoffry Allan
it appears quite apparent
that you people are really sad. trump is above all else, a good american. so.... stop being a
moron.
hexencoff 3 hours ago
no one gives a shit what John McCain says he's a scumbag!
hexencoff 3 hours ago
Jodi Boin i hope so too it's honestly very scary how far we have regressed as a country we are
fighting about the same things from 50 years ago everyone has their own beliefs and opinions and
some how adult conversation has been thrown away i mean we are still fighting over race relations
for crying out loud
Louis John 2 hours ago
@hexencoff
McCain is a trouble maker. supporter of the terrorist and warmonger Iraq Libya
Syria he is behind all the trouble scumbag
Gary M 3 hours ago
McCain is a globalist
belaghoulashi 2 hours ago
(edited) McCain has always been full of horseshit. And he has always relied on people calling
him a hero to get away with it. That schtick is old, the man is a monumental failure for this
country, and he needs to have his sorry butt kicked.
ryvr madduck 1 hour ago
+belaghoulashi
Most people don't know that after the 134 men died on the Forrestal fire in 1967 McCain was the
ONLY person helicoptered off the ship. It was done for his own safety as many on the ship blamed
him for causing the fire by "wet" starting his jet causing a plume of fire to shoot out his plane's
exhaust and into the plane behind McCain causing the ordnance to cook off on that jet. McCain
then panicked and dropped his own bombs onto the deck making matters much worse. McCain should
have ended his career in jail. Oh, wait, he kinda did, maybe karma justice?
Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
When you start to drain the swamp, the swamp creatures start to show.
Alexus Highfield 3 hours ago
@Michael Cambo
don't they...they do say shit floats.
Geoffry Allan 41 minutes ago
@Michael Cambo
- Trump has not drained the swamp he has surrounded himself with billionaires in his cabinet who
don't give a damn about the working middle class who struggle e eryday to make a living -
explain to me how he is draining the swamp
tim sparks 3 hours ago
Trump is trying so fucking hard to do a good job for us.
Integrity Truth-seeker 2 hours ago
@tim sparks
He is not trying... HE IS DOING IT... Like A Boss. Thank God Mark Taylor Prophecies
2017 the best is yet to come
Jodi Boin 3 hours ago
McCain is a traitor and is bought and paid for by Soros.
Grant Davidson 4 hours ago
Love him or hate him. The guy is a frikkin Genius...
Patrick Reagan 4 hours ago
FakeStream Media
Michael Cambo 4 hours ago
@Patrick Reagan
Very FakeStream Media
aspengold5 4 hours ago
I am so disappointed in McCain.
orlando pablo 4 hours ago
my 401k is keep on going up....thank u mr trump....
Dumbass Libtard 3 hours ago
McCain is not a Republican. He is a loser. Yuge difference.1
Mitchel Colvin 3 hours ago
Shut up McCain! I can't stand this clown anymore! Unfortunately, Arizona re-elected him for six
more years!
robert barham 4 hours ago
The very Fake Media has met their match
H My ways of thinking! 3 hours ago
Why does everyone feel that if they don't kiss McCain's ass, they are being un American? Mccain
has sold out to George Soros. He is a piece of shit who is guilty of no less than treason! Look
up the definition for treason if you're in doubt!
Sam Nardo 3 hours ago
(edited) Mc Cain and Graham are two of the best democrats in the GOP. They are called RINOS
kazzicup 3 hours ago
We love and support our President Donald Trump. The media is so dishonest. CNN = Criminal News
Network.
Geoffry Allan 34 minutes ago
@kazzicup - yeah if you get rid of the media Trump becomes
a dictator - is that what you want he will censor everything and tell you what he wants - Trump
is still president and he is doing his job and fulfilling his promises even though the media is
there and reporting - so what's the problem - I don't want a got damn dictator running this country
- if you don't like the media then just listen to Trump - 2nd amendment free speech and the right
to bear arms we have to respect it even if we may disagree
The "neoliberal establishment" (aka Washington Swamp) is deeply unpopular with American people.
Trump is not that popular, but he definitely less unpopular. Such statements s of "the
national media is the enemy" would be unthinkable a decade or two ago.
Notable quotes:
"... The National Media is the enemy. They are minor birds, repeaters of what the establishment wants parroted. They can no longer be considered American citizen friendly. They are indeed part of the Swamp to be drained. ..."
The National Media is the enemy. They are minor birds, repeaters of what the establishment
wants parroted. They can no longer be considered American citizen friendly. They are indeed part
of the Swamp to be drained.
Like former, despise current president matters not. We are still a nation of laws. The people
have spoken. We want the laws followed period. CNN, MSNBC, and others who continue to go after
our president will be met with an unbridled wave of conservative determination to restore law
and order.
Flynn could have said something
"inappropriate" by a Clintonista definition of "inappropriate", and he "could" be prosecuted
under a law designed to muzzle US citizens, that has never been tried bc a Bill of rights argument
would win!
How do you like the NKVD libruls afraid of Trump bringing fascism who were running
a gestapo (the FBI wiring tapping other country's Ministers) on US citizens of the opposing
party?
If the fascists are coming they would keep Obama's FBI!
Be worried: maybe they can. Since the hounding of Flynn, Trump has joined the
anti-Russia bandwagon, demanding that Russia return to Crimea to Ukraine, and making no
mention of removing sanctions. So all the threats and intimidation from the "intelligence
community" and the MSM
worked
, didn't they? Waiting for Trump to show some
real guts here. Waiting
"... The neocons and neoliberals want war. The cia/fbi/nsa wants to take away my freedom. The fake news wants to spread lies. This military industrial complex wants to send hundreds of millions to their deaths. As a nation, we are fucked. I'm guessing lots of innocent people are going to be slaughtered in the name of freedom. ..."
A Medical Theory for Donald Trump's Bizarre Behavior ... Many mental health professionals believe the president is ill. But what if the cause is an untreated STD? ... Al Franken recently raised a provocative question about Donald Trump: Is he mentally ill? On HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher last week, the Minnesota senator claimed that some of his Republican colleagues have "great concern about the president's temperament," adding that "there's a range in what they'll say, and some will say that he's not right mentally. And some are harsher." Two days later, he told CNN's Jake Tapper, "We all have this suspicion that-you know, that he's not-he lies a lot And, you know, that is not the norm for a president of the United States, or, actually, for a human being." -
The New Republic
So according to the The New Republic, President Donald Trump may have syphilis and should explore
treatment option as necessary with his personal physician.
He may have contracted it, according to the magazine, in the 1970s of 1980s when syphilis was on
the rise. If he didn't get it treated, it would be far advanced by now.
Advanced syphilis, neurosyphilis, and manifest itself in numerous ways, according to the article.
"Commonly recognized symptoms include irritability, loss of ability to concentrate, delusional thinking,
and grandiosity. Memory, insight, and judgment can become impaired. Insomnia may occur. Visual problems
may develop, including the inability of pupils to react to the light. This, along other ocular pathology,
can result in photophobia, dimming of vision, and squinting. All of these things have been observed
in Trump. Dementia, headaches, gait disturbances. and patchy hair loss can also be seen in later
stages of syphilis."
The neocons and neoliberals want war. The cia/fbi/nsa wants to take away my freedom. The fake news wants to spread lies. This military industrial complex wants to send hundreds of millions to their deaths. As a nation, we are fucked. I'm guessing lots of innocent people are going to be slaughtered in the name of freedom.
Interesting. When Hillary was followed by an ambulance, had crazy eyes, needed to be carried
to her car from time to time, had spasms, was delusional, was irritable, and had a dozen other
symptoms of medical problems, the media whores told us that she had pneumonia for one day. Now
they tell us that someone who puts them in their place is mentally ill. They are digging their
own grave. Soon nobody will believe the retard media.
Hard to believe the New Republic wasn't being satirical with their "syphilis" theory.
It seems that psychiatry wishes to make every personality type a disorder, in an effort to
convince people that their specialty is based on science and perhaps to drum up business, so Trump
has "Narcissistic Personality Disorder".
Narcissim is pretty common in US presidents, and is seen as a positive trait in many respects.
Research has estimated that the average US president's narcissism is about a standard deviation
beyond the average citizen – and even higher than that of the average reality television star.
We also know that narcissism in US presidents is linked to ratings of greatness. Highly narcissistic
presidents like Lyndon Johnson are leaders who make big changes. Less narcissistic presidents
like Jimmy Carter are rated as mediocre (but, in the case of Carter, also regarded as admired
ex-presidents because they are seen as moral and caring).
The globalist mafia is trying to destroy Trump. There might be the same part of intelligence
community which is still loyal to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Still Flynn discussing sanctions, which could have been a violation of an 18th century
law, the Logan Act, that bars unauthorized citizens from brokering deals with foreign governments
involved in disputes with the United States.
Keith Kellogg links with Oracle my be as asset to Trump team.
As far back as the passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11, civil libertarians worried about
the surveillance state, the Panopticon, the erosion of privacy rights and due process in the name
of national security.
Paranoid fantasies were floated that President George W. Bush was monitoring the library cards
of political dissidents. Civil libertarians hailed NSA contractor Edward Snowden as a hero, or at
least accepted him as a necessary evil, for exposing the extent of Internet surveillance under President
Barack Obama.
Will civil libertarians now speak up for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whose
career has been destroyed with a barrage of leaked wiretaps? Does anyone care if those leaks were
accurate or legal?
Over the weekend, a few honest observers of the Flynn imbroglio
noted that none of the strategically leaked intercepts of his conversations with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak proved he actually did anything wrong .
The media fielded accusations that Flynn discussed lifting the Obama administration's sanctions
on Russia – a transgression that would have been a serious violation of pre-inauguration protocol
at best, and a prosecutable offense at worst. Flynn ostensibly sealed his fate by falsely assuring
Vice President Mike Pence he had no such discussions with Kislyak, prompting Pence to issue a robust
defense of Flynn that severely embarrassed Pence in retrospect.
On Tuesday, Eli Lake of
Bloomberg News joined the chorus of skeptics who said the hive of anonymous leakers infesting
the Trump administration never leaked anything that proved Flynn lied to Pence:
He says in his resignation letter that he did not deliberately leave out elements of his conversations
with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak when he recounted them to Vice President Mike Pence. The New York
Times and Washington Post reported that the transcript of the phone call reviewed over the weekend
by the White House could be read different ways. One White House official with knowledge of the
conversations told me that the Russian ambassador raised the sanctions to Flynn and that Flynn
responded that the Trump team would be taking office in a few weeks and would review Russia policy
and sanctions . That's neither illegal nor improper.
Lake also noted that leaks of sensitive national security information, such as the transcripts
of Flynn's phone calls to Kislyak, are extremely rare. In their rush to collect a scalp from
the Trump administration, the media forgot to tell its readers how unusual and alarming the Flynn-quisition
was:
It's very rare that reporters are ever told about government-monitored communications of U.S.
citizens, let alone senior U.S. officials. The last story like this to hit Washington was in 2009
when Jeff Stein, then of CQ, reported on intercepted phone calls between a senior Aipac lobbyist
and Jane Harman, who at the time was a Democratic member of Congress.
Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government
secrets. This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored
by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of
anonymity. This is what police states do.
In the past it was considered scandalous for senior U.S. officials to even request the identities
of U.S. officials incidentally monitored by the government (normally they are redacted from intelligence
reports). John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was derailed in
2006 after the NSA confirmed he had made 10 such requests when he was Undersecretary of State
for Arms Control in George W. Bush's first term. The fact that the intercepts of Flynn's conversations
with Kislyak appear to have been widely distributed inside the government is a red flag.
While President Trump contemplated Flynn's fate on Monday evening, the
Wall Street Journal suggested: "How about asking if the spooks listening to Mr. Flynn
obeyed the law?" Among the questions the WSJ posed was whether intelligence agents secured proper
FISA court orders for the surveillance of Flynn.
That s the sort of question that convulsed the entire political spectrum, from liberals to libertarians,
after the Snowden revelations. Not long ago, both Democrats and Republicans were deeply concerned
about accountability and procedural integrity for the sprawling surveillance apparatus developed
by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Those are among the most serious concerns of the
Information Age, and they should not be cast aside in a mad dash to draw some partisan blood.
There are several theories as to exactly who brought Flynn down and why. Was it an internal White
House power struggle, the work of Obama administration holdovers, or the alligators of the "Deep
State" lunging to take a bite from the president who promised to "drain the swamp?"
The
Washington Free Beacon has sources who say Flynn's resignation is "the culmination of
a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald
Trump's national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran."
Flynn has prominently opposed that deal. According to the Free Beacon, this "small task
force of Obama loyalists" are ready to waylay anyone in the Trump administration who threatens the
Iran deal, their efforts coordinated by the sleazy Obama adviser who boasted of his ability to manipulate
the press by feeding them lies, Ben Rhodes.
Some observers are chucking at the folly of Michael Flynn daring to take on the intelligence community,
and paying the price for his reckless impudence. That is not funny – it is terrifying. In
fact, it is the nightmare of the rogue NSA come to life, the horror story that kept privacy advocates
tossing in their sheets for years.
Michael Flynn was appointed by the duly elected President of the United States. He certainly should
not have been insulated from criticism, but if he was brought down by entrenched, unelected agency
officials, it is nearly a coup – especially if, as Eli Lake worried on Twitter, Flynn's resignation
inspires further attacks with even higher-ranking targets:
Lake's article caught the eye of President Trump, who endorsed his point that intelligence and
law enforcement agencies should not interfere in U.S. politics:
Thank you to Eli Lake of The Bloomberg View – "The NSA & FBI should not interfere in our politics and
is" Very serious situation for USA
On the other hand, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard openly endorsed the Deep State overthrowing
the American electorate and overturning the results of the 2016 election:
Obviously strongly prefer normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to
it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.
Among the many things hideously wrong with this sentiment is that the American people know absolutely
nothing about the leakers who brought Flynn down, and might be lining up their next White House targets
at this very moment. We have no way to evaluate their motives or credibility. We didn't vote for
them, and we will have no opportunity to vote them out of office if we dissent from their agenda.
As mentioned above, we do not know if the material they are leaking is accurate .
Byron York of the Washington Examiner addressed the latter point by calling for full disclosure:
Important that entire transcript of Flynn-Kislyak conversation be released. Leakers have already
cherrypicked. Public needs to see it all.
That is no less important with Flynn's resignation in hand. We still need to know the full story
of his downfall. The American people deserve to know who is assaulting the government they voted
for in 2016. They deserve protection from the next attempt to manipulate our government with cherry
picked leaks.
They also deserve some intellectual consistency from those who have long and loudly worried about
the emergence of a surveillance state, and from conservatives who claim to value the rule of law.
Unknown persons with a mysterious agenda just made strategic use of partial information from a surveillance
program of uncertain legality to take out a presidential adviser.
Whether it's an Obama shadow government staging a Beltway insurrection, or Deep State officials
protecting their turf, this is the nightmare scenario of the post-Snowden era or are we not having
that nightmare anymore, if we take partisan pleasure in the outcome?
"... Support James Howard Kunstler blog by visiting Jim's Patreon Page -- ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds ..."
"... Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself? The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases. Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was. ..."
"... The story may have climaxed with Trump's Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State's power. ..."
"... This hulking security apparatus has become a menace to the Republic. ..."
"... Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations. When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal the Glass-Steagall Act? Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown American. For more than thirty years, we've been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can't do that anymore. The physics of capital will finally assert itself. ..."
"... perhaps it's a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction of clarity. ..."
The bamboozlement of the public is nearly complete. The Deep State has persuaded 80 percent of
Americans that all news is propaganda, especially the news emanating from the Deep State's own intel
department. They're still shooting for 100 percent. The fakest of all "fake news" stories turns out
to be "Russia Hacks Election." It was reported conclusively Saturday on the front page of The
New York Times , a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Deep State:
Putin Led a Complex Cyberattack Scheme to Aid Trump, Report Finds
WASHINGTON - President
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed a vast cyberattack aimed at denying
Hillary Clinton the presidency and installing
Donald
J. Trump in the Oval Office, the nation's top intelligence agencies said in an extraordinary
report they delivered on Friday to Mr. Trump.
You can be sure that this is now the "official" narrative aimed at the history books, sealing
the illegitimacy of Trump's election. It was served up with no direct proof, only the repeated "assertions"
that it was so. In fact, it's just this repetition of assertions-without-proof that defines propaganda.
It can also be interpreted as a declaration of war against an incoming president. The second civil
war now takes shape: It begins inside the groaning overgrown apparatus of the government itself.
Perhaps after that it spreads to the WalMart parking lots that have become America's new town square.
(WalMart sells pitchforks and patio torches.)
Did the Russians make Hillary Clinton look bad? Or did Hillary Clinton manage to do that herself?
The NSA propaganda was designed as a smokescreen to conceal the veracity of the Wikileaks releases.
Whoever actually rooted out the DNC and Podesta emails for Wikileaks ought to get the Pulitizer Prize
for the outstanding public service of disclosing exactly how dishonest the Hillary operation was.
The story may have climaxed with Trump's Friday NSA briefing, the heads of the various top
intel agencies all assembled in one room to emphasize the solemn authority of the Deep State's power.
Trump worked a nice piece of ju-jitsu afterward, pretending to accept the finding as briefly and
hollowly as possible and promising to "look into the matter" after January 20 th - when
he can tear a new asshole in the NSA. I hope he does. This hulking security apparatus has become
a menace to the Republic.
Whether Trump himself is a menace to the Republic remains to be seen. Certainly he is the
designated bag-holder for all the economic and financial depravity of several preceding administrations.
When the markets blow, do you suppose the Russians will be blamed for that? Did Boris Yeltsin repeal
the Glass-Steagall Act? Was Ben Bernanke a puppet of Putin? No, these actions and actors were homegrown
American. For more than thirty years, we've been borrowing too much money so we can pretend to afford
living in a blue-light-special demolition derby. And now we can't do that anymore. The physics of
capital will finally assert itself.
What we're actually seeing in the current ceremonial between the incoming Trump and the outgoing
Obama is the smoldering wreckage of the Democratic Party (which I'm still unhappily enrolled in),
and flames spreading into the Republican party - as idiots such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain
beat their war drums against Russia. The suave Mr. Obama is exiting the scene on a low wave of hysteria
and the oafish Trump rolls in on the cloudscape above, tweeting his tweets from on high, and
perhaps it's a good thing that the American people for the moment cannot tell exactly what the fuck
is going on in this country, because from that dismal place there is nowhere to go but in the direction
of clarity.
BY: Right. Brexit and maybe even Trump's
victory say something about the arrogance of the elite.
Bankers say that free trade should prevail. Even we,
academics-how many of us are actually looking into
distribution and redistribution? Few. We're still spending
time on writing dynamic models to talk about the gains of
trade.
Even if old-fashioned free trade is correct, the speed of
adjustment is very important. We know that rapid adjustment
is no good. How many of us ask ourselves what should be the
adjustment in trade? We rarely talk about that.
The world may have changed. I gave you my conjecture. But we
are also arrogant. We hold on to our old beliefs on the gains
of trade.
----
Very Dani Rodrick, I thought. Interesting stuff.
Also, this is something that I think you'll like. I have not
read all of it yet but here is the link and an excerpt:
http://evonomics.com/time-new-economic-thinking-based-best-science-available-not-ideology/
"Some will cling on to the idea that the consensus can be
revived. They will say we just need to defend it more
vigorously, the facts will eventually prevail, the populist
wave is exaggerated, it's really just about immigration,
Brexit will be a compromise, Clinton won more votes than
Trump, and so on. But this is wishful thinking. Large swathes
of the electorate have lost faith in the neoliberal
consensus, the political parties that backed it, and the
institutions that promoted it. This has created an
ideological vacuum being filled by bad old ideas, most
notably a revival of nationalism in the US and a number of
European countries, as well as a revival of the hard
socialist left in some countries."
I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff.
Consensus among whom? The economic-political elite? Maybe;
but certainly not among the general electorate. Most voters
were voting for parties out of habit, or on cultural issues
(for or against diversity and civil rights), or bread &
butter economic issues ("the Republicans will cut my taxes
and the regulation of my business" versus "the Democrats will
preserve my Medicare and Social Security"). I don't think
most voters had/have any clue of what neoliberalism is.
Well, you raise an excellent point. I don't have a solid
rejoinder but I will note that if even 5% of the electorate
changes its mind an election result can flip one way or the
other. But, yes, I agree with you that most voters are not
selecting a candidate based on which candidate's economic
philosophy is most closely aligned with theirs. Still,
especially in the primaries, where the voters are a different
population than the general, it could make a difference. I
would argue that it was just this difference that made
Sanders surprisingly popular among the Democratic primary
voters.
The question is to what extent people were voting FOR a
candidate, as AGAINST a candidate or the status quo. That's
the only point I was trying to make.
Most voters have neither the time, energy, inclination, or
knowledge base to delve into the issues to make an informed
decision on which candidate/platform most reflects their
values and aspirations. They subcontract out that vetting of
individual candidates to parties that they believe are
broadly reflective of their views.
This past general election, and its preceding primaries,
was the result of a broad revolt against the candidates
anointed by the parties' elites, indicating deep
dissatisfaction with the status quo.
"I think Peter K has been making similar points for a long
time now. Interesting stuff."
Yes I liked the as well.
Luigi Zingales is a member of the editorial board for Pro
Market and he had some piece published in the New York Times
about economics and politics (specifically Italian I think).
He was the first I read who compared Trump with Silvio
Berlusconi. Zingales discussed how Berlusconi was brought
down, by being treated as an ordinary conservative
politician. Perhaps the same will work with Trump.
Yes, I had read the evonomics piece and thought it was good.
Thanks. Eric Beinhocker makes some good points. I liked his
optimism as far as some forms of populism were concerned, and
had a slight hope that Donald Trump might turn into a
Theodore Roosevelt type of populist. That hope has
disappeared completely and now we face the realization that
we are truly completely screwed.
asymmetric information, and the recent illuminating example
of Wells Fargo's excellence in pushing products that
customers did not want nor need.
BY: Some financial "innovation" is faddish. It does not
create value.
GR: Approximately 9 percent of U.S. GDP is finance. Some
economists argue that probably 3-5 percent is useful for
allocating capital, storing value, smoothing consumptions,
and creating competition, and the rest is preying on
asymmetric information
"
~~Guy Roinik~
Do you see how this asymmetric information
plays out?
It is the retail vendor who keeps better information than
the retail customer. It is the vendor's expectations of
disinflation vs inflation rather than the customer's
expectations that control the change in M2V. Got it?
When vendor expects deflation he dumps inventory, but when
he expects inflation he holds on to inventory as he waits for
higher profit margins to arrive. He holds onto merchandise by
simply raising prices. But why do economists advertise the
reverse mechanism? Why does the status quo have a need for
distorting truth?
Inflation is offered to the proles as a substitute for tax
relief to the impoverished. Do you see how it works?
"
Tax relief for the wealthy will give you delicious inflation.
Now jump for it!
"
~~The Yea Sayers~
... A 2015 survey by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation
found there are more than 450 structurally deficient bridges
in the state, although the number is down from previous
years. Every working day, nearly 10 million cars, trucks, and
school buses cross these deteriorating overpasses. And then
there's the nation's rail system and airports, which lag far
behind other nations in speed, efficiency, and modernization.
...
Bridgework and a partial plate! Should we shift gears on
our interstate construction?
By building our long haul interstates as one-way roads
interleaved with roads going in other direction, we could
have twice as many roads but intersections could be much
simpler, efficient, and less confusing. Freeflow
overpass/underpass with turning ramps will save fuel thus
environment. Sure!
We waste lot of traffic control man hours and squad cars
that could be otherwise deployed towards solving crime and
crushing the mob. By proper design and construction of speed
bumps some of this highway patrol could be eliminated. Ceu!
Rather that short 2 foot bumps in the road, build smooth
slow and long valley and knoll that will not rattle your
frame and bill you for steering realignment but instead send
an 18 wheeler up into the air for a half gainer. This kind of
speed trap could eliminate lot of bad
"... And I am not sure that it was neoliberal globalization as the only factor in rasining the standards of living in case of China. They have also industrialization process going on, give or take. Chinese maquiladoras were allowed under strict conditions of transferring technology. That's what distinguishes China from India or Mexico, where neoliberal administrations were much less protective of interest of their nations and allowed Western monopolies more freedom. ..."
"... On the basis of careful empirical work, Rodrik concluded that "globalization makes it difficult to sustain the postwar social bargain" of labor peace in exchange for "steadily improving worker pay and benefits." ..."
"... It's not globalization, it's "neoliberal globalization" and neoliberalism in general which killed the New Deal capitalism. As soon as the US elite realized the cookies are not enough for everybody they start withdrawing them from the table. Stagnation and the subsequent collapse of the USSR also played an important role, allowing neoliberal propagandists to claim the victory. ..."
""seem unimpressed by the fact that globalization has lifted
hundreds of millions of desperately poor people in China and
India into the global middle class. ""
Ergo enabling the savaging
of working class people in the US was worth it.
And I am not sure that it was neoliberal globalization as the
only factor in rasining the standards of living in case of China. They have also industrialization process going on, give or
take. Chinese maquiladoras were allowed under strict conditions
of transferring technology. That's what distinguishes China from
India or Mexico, where neoliberal administrations were much less
protective of interest of their nations and allowed Western monopolies
more freedom.
After all the Communist Party is still a ruling Party of China.
With a neoliberal twist yes, but they still adhere to the ideas
of Marx.
Kuttner really captures the contributions of Dani Rodrik. If
I had to pick one sentence to capture this review - it would
be this:
On the basis of careful empirical work, Rodrik concluded
that "globalization makes it difficult to sustain the postwar
social bargain" of labor peace in exchange for "steadily
improving worker pay and benefits."
libezkova -> pgl...
, -1
It's not globalization, it's "neoliberal globalization" and neoliberalism
in general which killed the New Deal capitalism. As soon as the US elite realized the cookies are not enough
for everybody they start withdrawing them from the table.
Stagnation and the subsequent collapse of the USSR also played
an important role, allowing neoliberal propagandists to claim
the victory.
"... Block refugee admissions from the war-torn country of Syria indefinitely. ..."
"... Suspend refugee admissions from all countries for 120 days. After that period, the U.S. will only accept refugees from countries jointly approved by the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the Director of National Intelligence. ..."
"... Expedite the completion of a biometric entry-exit tracking system for all visitors to the U.S. and require in-person interviews for all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa. ..."
"... Suspend the visa interview waiver program indefinitely and review whether existing reciprocity agreements are reciprocal in practice. ..."
According to the draft executive order, President
Donald Trump plans
to:
Block refugee admissions from the war-torn country of Syria indefinitely.
Suspend refugee admissions from all countries for 120 days. After that period, the U.S. will
only accept refugees from countries jointly approved by the Department of Homeland Security, the
State Department and the Director of National Intelligence.
Cap total refugee admissions for fiscal year 2017 at 50,000 ― less than half of the 110,000
proposed by the Obama administration.
Ban for 30 days all "immigrant and nonimmigrant" entry of individuals from countries designated
in Division O, Title II, Section 203 of the 2016 consolidated appropriations act: Iraq, Syria,
Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. These countries were
targeted last year in restrictions on dual nationals' and recent travelers' participation
in the visa waiver program.
Suspend visa issuance to countries of "particular concern." After 60 days, DHS, the State
Department and DNI are instructed to draft a list of countries that don't comply with requests
for information. Foreign nationals from those countries will be banned from entering the U.S.
Establish "safe zones to protect vulnerable Syrian populations." The executive order tasks
the secretary of defense with drafting a plan for safe zones in Syria within 90 days. This would
be be an escalation of U.S. involvement in Syria and could be the first official indication of
how Trump will approach the conflict there.
Expedite the completion of a biometric entry-exit tracking system for all visitors to the
U.S. and require in-person interviews for all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa.
Suspend the visa interview waiver program indefinitely and review whether existing reciprocity
agreements are reciprocal in practice.
The draft order, which is expected to be signed later this week, details the Trump administration's
plans to "collect and make publicly available within 180 days ... information regarding the number
of foreign-born individuals in the United States who have been radicalized after entry into the United
States and engaged in terrorism-related acts." It also describes plans to collect information about
"gender-based violence against women or honor killings" by foreign-born individuals in the U.S.
The
language is unclear as to whether the names of these individuals, which could include American citizens,
would be made public, nor does the document define "radicalized" or "terrorism-related acts," leaving
open the potential to sweep vast numbers of people onto the list.
The move is reminiscent of the
expansive enemies lists created by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover last century.
Jimmy Dore makes some great points from time to time but this
particular rant has so many flaws that it would be a real
undertaking to itemize all of them.
Millions if not billions of people, including millions of
USAmericans have been horrified at US terrorism wherever it
occurs. We weren't OK with the US terrorizing these seven
countries or any of the other countries the US has terrorized.
We protested. We talked to our political representatives. We
advised young men to refuse to volunteer to kill and be killed
for money. We did whatever we could think of to stop the
carnage. We were unsuccessful.
It's not the temporary ban on immigration that upsets people so
much as singling out people from specific countries, whether
Obama's Republican Congress in did it or Trump did it. The ban
should be on all religious extremists including apartheid
Zionists and Christian extremists. Religious extremists from all
of the major religious have committed heinous atrocities.
I could go on, but those are the main points I wanted to make.
What? Fake news isn't enough for you, so now you're engaging
in fake debate? You have problems with Jimmy's points then
argue them. Too many for you? Then pick the top six and
critique them. Otherwise stop stuffing your fingers in your
ears and loudly singing patriotic songs to drown out the
unpleasant truths. P.S. There were significant protests when
Bush Jr. was running the show but they all died out after
Obama took over the nation's reins. After that all I heard
from the American left about his constant assault on the
Constitution, keeping Guantanamo, the country's wars of
aggression, U.S. support of the military coup in Honduras,
his unconditional and unlimited subsidization of Wall Street,
his unprecedented vendetta against government whistle
blowers, and his impressive accumulation of 306 golf outings
(at a gob smacking five hours a pop!) ... was crickets.
You read different stuff than I do. I heard a fire hose
stream of Progressive/liberal criticism of Obama's
policies and enormous disappointment in Obama - including
from people like Michael Moore, Rachael Maddow, and Amy
Goodman, and especially from Glenn Greenwald, Assange and
other brilliant political thinkers as well as from
Veterans for Peace, Pro-Palestine humanitarians, and
anti-nuclear activists. Medea Benjamin has been on the
front lines for eight years attacking Obama's war
mongering. Of course we need many more like her. Unless
you are her, using a fake name, then why weren't you right
there with her?
And the Demo establishment lines up to attack Drumpf's ban;
hoping to get some easy votes for corporatist neo-con
hypocrites? Cynical demo pigs would love to impeach Drumpf and
wage nice with Pence. We are f*^ked unless we (us "lefty
ranters" and more) don't demand radical change from the
Corporatist neo-fascist establishments of both parties - the
party of dicks and the party of pant-suited V's. And the
media/wall street/military industrial complex can't get enough
of this.
BEWARE -- Why is the Zionist control media, and many Zionist
controlled organizations, so adamant about allowing people from
war torn Muslim countries come to the US ?
The main purpose of all the noise against president Trump is to
weaken him and then force him to take the positions the deep
state wants him to take. Among the many problems he has he is
only an apprentice.
Trump's Muslim ban is not about terrorism or keeping America
safe. Otherwise Saudia Arabia would have been on the top of
list. This is about countries that stand against the US/Israel
agenda.
https://www.darkmoon.me/ /dona..
.
This guy should take Wolf Blitzer's job and expose the truth on
the national media. Blitzer can be consigned to telling risible
lies on You Tube, as should most of the jokers in the so-called
mainstream media.
People attacking Trump after 11 days in office, NEVER criticized
Mrs. Clinton, Obama forblowing up and killing hundreds of
thousands in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, etc, the phony bought and
paid for Establishment Liberals who only call them 'war crimes '
when an (R) is attached to the Presidents name like: Michael
Moore, Rachael Maddow, Medea Benjamin and Amy Goodman,
all frauds and liars like CNN, CBS and NBC, who ran this slimey
headline:
"Citizens" who speak at town meetings are hired, scripted actors
"Last December, the town council in Camarillo, a small town in
southern California, a man called Prince Jordan Tyson stood up
and delivered a three minute speech as a "concerned citizen"
about a planned construction project before the council.
Tyson is not a concerned citizen of Camarillo: he's a struggling
actor from Beverly Hills, who was paid $100 to deliver a
scripted position from the podium while misrepresenting himself
as a local, sincere citizen.
Tyson worked for Adam Swart, a recent UCLA grad, who runs a
company called "Crowds on Demand," which hires actors to attend
politicians' campaign meetings, and to deliver scripted dialog
in the guise of concerned citizens. Swart says that he has been
paid by "dozens of campaigns for state officials, and 2016
presidential candidates" whom he won't name, because if he "did,
nobody would hire us."
http://boingboing.net/2016/02/19/citizens-who-spe...
All those demonstrating against Trump are a asset to the deep
state. I can't understand why those demonstrators in the UK/EU
bashing Trump, there are more pressing reasons to demonstrate
in the UK, poverty, austerity, families relying on food banks
that the supermarkets have thrown out, where are the marches
against that obscenity, instead of going along with the agenda
of the Clinton band wagon, those causing havoc in the US/UK/EU,
would be better employed in demonstrating against those who have
created all those immigrants Muslim or otherwise in the first
place, ie; bush blair obama the clintons etc; time those out on
the streets got their priorities right.
People attacking Trump after 11 days in office, NEVER criticized
Mrs. Clinton, Obama forblowing up and killing hundreds of
thousands in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, etc, the phony bought and
paid for Establishment Liberals who only call them 'war crimes '
when an (R) is attached to the Presidents name like: Michael
Moore, Rachael Maddow, Medea Benjamin and Amy Goodman,
all frauds and liars like CNN, CBS and NBC, who ran this slimey
headline:
"Citizens" who speak at town meetings are hired, scripted actors
"Last December, the town council in Camarillo, a small town in
southern California, a man called Prince Jordan Tyson stood up
and delivered a three minute speech as a "concerned citizen"
about a planned construction project before the council.
Tyson is not a concerned citizen of Camarillo: he's a struggling
actor from Beverly Hills, who was paid $100 to deliver a
scripted position from the podium while misrepresenting himself
as a local, sincere citizen.
Tyson worked for Adam Swart, a recent UCLA grad, who runs a
company called "Crowds on Demand," which hires actors to attend
politicians' campaign meetings, and to deliver scripted dialog
in the guise of concerned citizens. Swart says that he has been
paid by "dozens of campaigns for state officials, and 2016
presidential candidates" whom he won't name, because if he "did,
nobody would hire us."
http://boingboing.net/2016/02/19/citizens-who-spe...
Strife Over
Immigrants: Can California Predict the
Nation's Future?
https://nyti.ms/2jW2PTW
via
@UpshotNYT
NYT - Emily Badger - February 1, 2017
The political ads warned that illegal immigrants were dashing, by the millions, over the Mexican
border, racing to claim taxpayer-funded public services in California.
"They keep coming," the announcer intoned over grainy aerial footage and a thrumming bassline.
When viewed on YouTube today, these ads hardly seem the stuff of multicultural California as we know
it.
In 1994, though, that message helped lift California's governor, the Republican Pete Wilson, to
re-election. That same year, voters adopted a referendum, Proposition 187, denying state services
to undocumented immigrants, including public education and health care.
California is often held up as a harbinger of the demographics - and, Democrats hope, the politics
- of the nation to come. Mr. Wilson's bet against immigration is thought to have hurt Republicans
in the long run in the state. But in the dawn of the Trump era, the state is also a cautionary tale
of what happens during the tumultuous years when that change is occurring rapidly.
Donald J. Trump has taken office in a nation that is not only growing more diverse, but also growing
more diverse everywhere, because of both foreign immigration and shifting internal migration patterns
that are touching the last bastions of nearly all-white America.
After an election in which Mr. Trump appealed to unease about the nation's changing identity -
and a month when he alarmed civil rights leaders and immigration advocates - his presidency poses
a very different question from his predecessor's.
Not: Are we post-racial? But: How will we handle the racial change that is only going to accelerate?
Sociological studies suggest that increasing contact between groups can yield familiarity and
tolerance. But it can also unnerve, especially in communities where that rapid change is most visible
- and when politicians stand to gain by exploiting it. California lashed out at diversity before
embracing it.
"There's a very rich history of xenophobia, of racism, of trying to wipe each other out," said
Connie Rice, a longtime civil rights lawyer in California. "It's not like we were all of a sudden
born the Golden State." ...
Related?
More Californians dreaming of a country without
Trump: poll
http://reut.rs/2j6s8iG
Reuters - Sharon Bernstein - January 24
The election of Republican businessman Donald Trump as president of the United States has some
Californians dreaming - of their own country.
One in every three California residents supports the most populous U.S. state's peaceful withdrawal
from the union, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, many of them Democrats strongly opposed
to Trump's ascension to the country's highest office.
The 32 percent support rate is sharply higher than the last time the poll asked Californians about
secession, in 2014, when one-in-five or 20 percent favored it around the time Scotland held its independence
referendum and voted to remain in the United Kingdom.
California also far surpasses the national average favoring secession, which stood at 22 percent,
down from 24 percent in 2014.
The poll surveyed 500 Californians among more than 14,000 adults nationwide from Dec. 6 to Jan.
19 and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of one percentage point nationally and
five percentage points in California.
The idea of secession is largely a settled matter in the United States, though the impulse to
break away carries on in some corners of the country, most notably in Texas.
While interest has remained about the same nationwide, it has found more favor in California and
the concept has even earned a catchy name - "Calexit."
"I don't think it's likely to happen, but if things get really bad it could be an option," said
Stephen Miller, 70, a retired transportation planner who lives in Sacramento and told pollsters he
"tended to support" secession. ...
'Calexit' would be a disaster for progressive values
http://fw.to/ks9LHNS
LA Times - January 27
Imagine if President Trump announced that he wanted to oust California from the United States.
If it weren't for us, after all, Trump would have won the popular vote he so lusts after by 1.4 million.
Blue America would lose its biggest source of electoral votes in all future elections. The Senate
would have two fewer Democrats. The House of Representatives would lose 38 Democrats and just 14
Republicans. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, among the most liberal in the nation, would be
changed irrevocably. And the U.S. as a whole would suddenly be a lot less ethnically diverse than
it is today.
For those reasons, Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan,
Republicans with White House ambitions, opponents of legalizing marijuana, advocates of criminalizing
abortion and various white nationalist groups might all conclude –– for different reasons –– that
they would benefit politically from a separation, even as liberals and progressives across America
would correctly see it as a catastrophe.
So it makes sense that the leader of the Yes California Independence Campaign, Marcus Ruiz Evans,
was - contrary to popular assumptions - a registered Republican when he formed the separatist group
two years ago, according to the San Jose Mercury News. He briefly hosted conservative talk radio
shows in Fresno, and would not tell the newspaper if he voted for Trump. ...
Point well made! Regarding the argument that today's
immigrants aren't as willing as past immigrants to
assimilate, I recently read that 80% of 19th Century German
immigrants returned to Germany, and 30% of Italian immigrants
did the same.
Our national mythology glosses over the history of how
unwelcoming our country has mostly been to new immigrants.
The idea that America has always been a land that welcomed
immigrants and provided them immediate opportunity is very
comfortable, but it contradicts a much harsher history. It's
a real shame that so many of our fellow countrymen are
willfully ignorant of their own ancestors' struggles, and are
willing to inflict the same harshness on our newest arrivals.
On the other hand, the news coverage of this past
weekend's protests over the Trump immigration Executive Order
included a picture of a man carrying a sign saying,
"Mexican-Americans Welcome Muslim Refugees!" I can't thing of
anything that expresses the ideals of real Americanism better
than that!
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday titled "Protecting the Nation From Foreign
Terrorist Entry Into the United States." Following is the language of that order, as supplied by
the White House.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of
America, including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101
et seq
., and section
301 of title 3, United States Code, and to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by
foreign nationals admitted to the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose
.
The visa-issuance process plays a crucial role in detecting individuals
with terrorist ties and stopping them from entering the United States. Perhaps in no instance was
that more apparent than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when State Department policy
prevented consular officers from properly scrutinizing the visa applications of several of the 19
foreign nationals who went on to murder nearly 3,000 Americans. And while the visa-issuance process
was reviewed and amended after the September 11 attacks to better detect would-be terrorists from
receiving visas, these measures did not stop attacks by foreign nationals who were admitted to the
United States.
Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes
since September 11, 2001, including foreign nationals who entered the United States after receiving
visitor, student, or employment visas, or who entered through the United States refugee resettlement
program. Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest
increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the United States. The
United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those approved for
admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism.
In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country
do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and
should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies
over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry
or hatred (including "honor" killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution
of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of
any race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals
who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign
nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.
Sec. 3. Suspension of Issuance of Visas and Other Immigration Benefits to Nationals of Countries
of Particular Concern
.
(a) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary
of State and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately conduct a review to determine
the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit under
the INA (adjudications) in order to determine that the individual seeking the benefit is who the
individual claims to be and is not a security or public-safety threat.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director
of National Intelligence, shall submit to the President a report on the results of the review described
in subsection (a) of this section, including the Secretary of Homeland Security's determination of
the information needed for adjudications and a list of countries that do not provide adequate information,
within 30 days of the date of this order. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide a copy
of the report to the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence.
(c) To temporarily reduce investigative burdens on relevant agencies during the review period
described in subsection (a) of this section, to ensure the proper review and maximum utilization
of available resources for the screening of foreign nationals, and to ensure that adequate standards
are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals, pursuant to section 212(f)
of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the
United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1187(a)(12),
would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United
States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order
(excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization
visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 visas).
(d) Immediately upon receipt of the report described in subsection (b) of this section regarding
the information needed for adjudications, the Secretary of State shall request all foreign governments
that do not supply such information to start providing such information regarding their nationals
within 60 days of notification.
(e) After the 60-day period described in subsection (d) of this section expires, the Secretary
of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, shall submit to the President
a list of countries recommended for inclusion on a Presidential proclamation that would prohibit
the entry of foreign nationals (excluding those foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas,
North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G-1, G-2,
G-3, and G-4 visas) from countries that do not provide the information requested pursuant to subsection
(d) of this section until compliance occurs.
(f) At any point after submitting the list described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretary
of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security may submit to the President the names of any additional
countries recommended for similar treatment.
(g) Notwithstanding a suspension pursuant to subsection (c) of this section or pursuant to a Presidential
proclamation described in subsection (e) of this section, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security
may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration
benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.
(h) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall submit to the President a joint report
on the progress in implementing this orderwithin 30 days of the date of this order, a second report
within 60 daysof the date of this order, a third report within 90 days of the date of this order,
and a fourth report within 120 days of the date of this order.
Sec. 4. Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs
.
(a) The
Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, and
the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation shall implement a program, as part of the adjudication
process for immigration benefits, to identify individuals seeking to enter the United States on a
fraudulent basis with the intent to cause harm, or who are at risk of causing harm subsequent to
their admission. This program will include the development of a uniform screening standard and procedure,
such as in-person interviews; a database of identity documents proffered by applicants to ensure
that duplicate documents are not used by multiple applicants; amended application forms that include
questions aimed at identifying fraudulent answers and malicious intent; a mechanism to ensure that
the applicant is who the applicant claims to be; a process to evaluate the applicant's likelihood
of becoming a positively contributing member of society and the applicant's ability to make contributions
to the national interest; and a mechanism to assess whether or not the applicant has the intent to
commit criminal or terrorist acts after entering the United States.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the Secretary of State, the Director
of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, shall submit to
the President an initial report on the progress of this directive within 60 days of the date of this
order, a second report within 100 days of the date of this order, and a third report within 200 days
of the date of this order.
Sec. 5. Realignment of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for Fiscal Year 2017
.
(a) The
Secretary of State shall suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days. During
the 120-day period, the Secretary of State, in conjunction with the Secretary of Homeland Security
and in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, shall review the USRAP application
and adjudication process to determine what additional procedures should be taken to ensure that those
approved for refugee admission do not pose a threat to the security and welfare of the United States,
and shall implement such additional procedures. Refugee applicants who are already in the USRAP process
may be admitted upon the initiation and completion of these revised procedures. Upon the date that
is 120 days after the date of this order, the Secretary of State shall resume USRAP admissions only
for nationals of countries for which the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security,
and the Director of National Intelligence have jointly determined that such additional procedures
are adequate to ensure the security and welfare of the United States.
(b) Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the
Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law,
to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided
that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality.
Where necessary and appropriate, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall recommend legislation
to the President that would assist with such prioritization.
(c) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the entry
of nationals of Syria as refugees is detrimental to the interests of the United States and thus suspend
any such entry until such time as I have determined that sufficient changes have been made to the
USRAP to ensure that admission of Syrian refugees is consistent with the national interest.
(d) Pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), I hereby proclaim that the entry
of more than 50,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017 would be detrimental to the interests of the United
States, and thus suspend any such entry until such time as I determine that additional admissions
would be in the national interest.
(e) Notwithstanding the temporary suspension imposed pursuant to subsection (a) of this section,
the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may jointly determine to admit individuals to the
United States as refugees on a case-by-case basis, in their discretion, but only so long as they
determine that the admission of such individuals as refugees is in the national interest - including
when the person is a religious minority in his country of nationality facing religious persecution,
when admitting the person would enable the United States to conform its conduct to a preexisting
international agreement, or when the person is already in transit and denying admission would cause
undue hardship - and it would not pose a risk to the security or welfare of the United States.
(f) The Secretary of State shall submit to the President an initial report on the progress of
the directive in subsection (b) of this section regarding prioritization of claims made by individuals
on the basis of religious-based persecution within 100 days of the date of this order and shall submit
a second report within 200 days of the date of this order.
(g) It is the policy of the executive branch that, to the extent permitted by law and as practicable,
State and local jurisdictions be granted a role in the process of determining the placement or settlement
in their jurisdictions of aliens eligible to be admitted to the United States as refugees. To that
end, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall examine existing law to determine the extent to which,
consistent with applicable law, State and local jurisdictions may have greater involvement in the
process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions, and shall
devise a proposal to lawfully promote such involvement.
Sec. 6. Rescission of Exercise of Authority Relating to the Terrorism Grounds of Inadmissibility
.
The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security shall, in consultation with the Attorney General,
consider rescinding the exercises of authority in section 212 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182, relating
to the terrorism grounds of inadmissibility, as well as any related implementing memoranda.
Sec. 7. Expedited Completion of the Biometric Entry-Exit Tracking System. (a) The Secretary of
Homeland Security shall expedite the completion and implementation of a biometric entry-exit tracking
system for all travelers to the United States, as recommended by the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall submit to the President periodic reports on the progress
of the directive contained in subsection (a) of this section. The initial report shall be submitted
within 100 days of the date of this order, a second report shall be submitted within 200 days of
the date of this order, and a third report shall be submitted within 365 days of the date of this
order. Further, the Secretary shall submit a report every 180 days thereafter until the system is
fully deployed and operational.
Sec. 8. Visa Interview Security
.
(a) The Secretary of State shall immediately suspend the
Visa Interview Waiver Program and ensure compliance with section 222 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1222, which
requires that all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa undergo an in-person interview, subject
to specific statutory exceptions.
(b) To the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, the Secretary
of State shall immediately expand the Consular Fellows Program, including by substantially increasing
the number of Fellows, lengthening or making permanent the period of service, and making language
training at the Foreign Service Institute available to Fellows for assignment to posts outside of
their area of core linguistic ability, to ensure that non-immigrant visa-interview wait times are
not unduly affected.
Sec. 9. Visa Validity Reciprocity
.
The Secretary of State shall review all nonimmigrant
visa reciprocity agreements to ensure that they are, with respect to each visa classification, truly
reciprocal insofar as practicable with respect to validity period and fees, as required by sections
221(c) and 281 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1201(c) and 1351, and other treatment. If a country does not
treat United States nationals seeking nonimmigrant visas in a reciprocal manner, the Secretary of
State shall adjust the visa validity period, fee schedule, or other treatment to match the treatment
of United States nationals by the foreign country, to the extent practicable.
Sec. 10. Transparency and Data Collection
.
(a) To be more transparent with the American
people, and to more effectively implement policies and practices that serve the national interest,
the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall, consistent
with applicable law and national security, collect and make publicly available within 180 days, and
every 180 days thereafter:
(i) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged
with terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; convicted of terrorism-related offenses
while in the United States; or removed from the United States based on terrorism-related activity,
affiliation, or material support to a terrorism-related organization, or any other national security
reasons since the date of this order or the last reporting period, whichever is later;
(ii) information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been
radicalized after entry into the United States and engaged in terrorism-related acts, or who have
provided material support to terrorism-related organizations in countries that pose a threat to the
United States, since the date of this order or the last reporting period, whichever is later; and
(iii) information regarding the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women,
including honor killings, in the United States by foreign nationals, since the date of this order
or the last reporting period, whichever is later; and
(iv) any other information relevant to public safety and security as determined by the Secretary
of Homeland Security and the Attorney General, including information on the immigration status of
foreign nationals charged with major offenses.
(b) The Secretary of State shall, within one year of the date of this order, provide a report
on the estimated long-term costs of the USRAP at the Federal, State, and local levels.
Sec. 11. General Provisions
.
(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or
otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary,
administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability
of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural,
enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies,
or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
"... I happen to think the heartlessness of this Order was a feature, not a bug, in order to garner maximum attention. I just read Mish's comment section, and Trump's base is cheering. ..."
"... silent on ethnic racism and the rest of US so much more guilty ..... on drone assassination and militarist nation building gone awry, tilting with nuclear war to keep NATO less recondite, etc, etc....... ..."
"... Before the Nazi had the power to go after the Jews they had effect the party's police state, before which ordinary Germans [and whatever police there were after the depression shuttered everything] permitted the party to do organized violence on their opponents: the social democrats, socialists, bolshevists, et al. ..."
"... The ban on returning residents is utterly against the law. ..."
'Mr. Trump's executive
order is un-American, not Christian, and hopefully
unconstitutional. This is a shameful act and no good person
can remain silent.'
Thanks for saying this Bill. JFK International had a
demonstration against this ban that featured the detention of
a brave Iraqi who helped US troops. This ban is also
incredibly stupid.
I happen to think the heartlessness of
this Order was a feature, not a bug, in order to garner
maximum attention. I just read Mish's comment section, and
Trump's base is cheering.
But on a longer term scale, heartlessness towards
Muslim immigrants and DREAMers is going to turn persuadables
against Trump. That and the next recession.
We'll differ on this one part, people that voted for Trump
are not persuadables. They have always voted the same way in
every single election they have voted in.
Amazes me that
even now people keep thinking that Trump voters are anything
but loyal GOP voters. And I think the best argument against
this (besides common sense) is the reaction of Rep leaders to
this obviously illegal action.
They're silent.
They cannot afford to speak out against this racist
policy, as their own voters are for this racist policy.
silent on ethnic racism and the rest of US so much more
guilty ..... on drone assassination and militarist nation
building gone awry, tilting with nuclear war to keep NATO
less recondite, etc, etc.......
Are the libruls all
riled up because the immigrant ban might reduce terror
shootings in US to reduce screaming for techno-murder?
There were a fair amount of voters who "came home" to the GOP
before the election, even though they found Trump himself
distasteful. At least some of those nouveau-Reagan democrats
also voted for him because of his economic agenda. They
believed that his racism was all for show.
Once upon a time, for
academic reasons I read the same book that Trump was rumored
to have by his bedside in NYC: the english translation of the
full text of Adolf Hitler's speeches. Hitler's argument for
getting ordinary Germans to go along with his extreme
anti-Semitic agenda was masterful. It went in essence like
this: "I know that there are a very few good Jews, and you
may know a few of them. But the vast majority of Jews, who
you don't know, are evil. But in order to get to the mass of
bad apples, we might have to inflict some hardship on a few
good people." By getting people to overlook their own
experience with Jews they knew, he prevailed.
In contrast - for example - gay rights triumphed when
enough people knew gays in their ordinary lives, and realized
that they were no different from anybody else. So they were
unable to see any valid reason to discriminate against them.
This ban is much more like the second situation than the
first. It is inflicting a lot of pain on a lot of good
people, in order to get to (allegedly) a few bad apples, and
people can see that. It is not going to be popular.
Before the Nazi had the power to go after the Jews they
had effect the party's police state, before which ordinary
Germans [and whatever police there were after the depression
shuttered everything] permitted the party to do organized
violence on their opponents: the social democrats,
socialists, bolshevists, et al.
"We'll differ on this one part, people that voted
for Trump are not persuadables. They have always voted the
same way in every single election they have voted in."
Reminds me of the obstinate, closed-mindedness which Trump
voters direct at immigrants and Muslims.
Neoliberals have not delivered a growing, healthy economy
despite Krugman's claims that everything is great, crime is
down, etc.
Obama's record for 8 years is an average of 1.7
percent growth. NGDP is even worse which is why I support an
NGDP target for the Fed. It would show how poorly they have
done.
This after decades of corporate trade deals and a
shrinking middle class.
People are angry. They want scapegoats. Trump provided
them with scapegoats and the uneducated white working class
took the bait.
I appreciate Bill's judgement that Trump's acts are odious,
but "un-American, not Christian, and hopefully
unconstitutional" seems to be going too far.
It only takes a quick tour of historical US acts on
immigration to find plenty of precedent.
1870-1943, Chinese.
1882, lunatics.
1907, Japanese
1921, everybody.
1923, Indians.
1932, everybody, especially Mexicans.
Mme. Chiang Kai Shek (recently
deceased at age 106 on Long Island) has much to answer for
before the bar of history, but she had one shining moment.
Supposedly at one point during WW2 both she and Winston
Churchill were living at the White House (must have made for
interesting dinner conversation). Anyway, during that time
she gave a speech to Congress. In that speech she pointed out
that Japanese militarist propaganda, that America's myth of
liberty and equality before the law was hypocritical, had one
inconvenient feature: given the Chinese and Japanese
Exclusion Acts, it was true.
This speech was so shaming that Congress changed the law
to allow Asian immigation - in a trickle at first, but
thereafter a river.
Yes, and her teenage voyage to San Francisco ended with her
being treated exactly like the people being detained at
airports this weekend. It made a lifelong impression on her.
Yes, its pretty unremarkable. And you are correct the that
Christian Arab refugees from Syria have been accepted at 5%
of the rate their population would suggest:
"But the
numbers tell a different story: The United States has
accepted 10,801 Syrian refugees, of whom 56 are Christian.
Not 56 percent; 56 total, out of 10,801. That is to say,
one-half of 1 percent.
The BBC says that 10 percent of all Syrians are Christian,
which would mean 2.2 million Christians. It is quite obvious,
and President Barack Obama and Secretary John Kerry have
acknowledged it, that Middle Eastern Christians are an
especially persecuted group."
Here's a quite detailed discussion of the background around
the EO and its implementation ... including the 2015 law
limiting visas from those countries, and the reference for
the above quote. It also contrasts the headlines in much of
the press. As they say, read the whole thing.
"There is a postponement of entry from 7 countries (Iraq,
Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) previously
identified by the Obama administration as posing
extraordinary risks.
That they are 7 majority Muslim countries does not mean
there is a Muslim ban, as most of the countries with the
largest Muslim populations are not on the list (e.g., Egypt,
Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey,
Nigeria and more).
Thus, the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world is not
affected.
Moreover, the "ban" is only for four months while
procedures are reviewed, with the exception of Syria for
which there is no time limit.
There is a logic to the 7 countries. Six are failed states
known to have large ISIS activity, and one, Iran, is a sworn
enemy of the U.S. and worldwide sponsor of terrorism.
And, the 7 countries on the list were not even
so-designated by Trump. Rather, they were selected last year
by the Obama administration as posing special risks for visa
entry ..."
I believe they don't mention that IIRC we were bombing 5
of the 7 counties on the list last month.
The current system relies on referrals from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Syria's population in
2011 was 90 percent Muslim and 10 percent Christian, CNS
said. Less than 3% admitted as refugees are Christian. But
not the state dept's doing.
I've seen some farmers of late complaining about Trump's
protectionism hurting their business. Yes they are smart
enough to realize that the dollar appreciation will reduce
their exports. Too bad these rural Americans were not smart
enough on election day not to vote Trump in as President.
The man knows only what he's seen on cable TV most of which
he doesn't understand. Knows nothing about: economics, trade,
foreign affairs, government, law, ... He epitomizes the know
nothings of the world, and, the fact that he doesn't know
doesn't bother him in the least. A narcissists-grandiose type
with neither regard nor interest for the probable
consequences.
I think it's wrong to even hope Trump turns out well. I think
the country needs act to save democracy, to save itself from
traveling down the road of despots and tyrants, from the
likes of Trump who can be manipulated by the likes of Bannon.
stupid is one who ignores that Obama presidency growth
averaged 1.7% and failed to lift millions while wall street
prospered and corporate market power increased both in goods
and labor markets.
"... There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence community ..."
"... the President had argued that intelligence services were politically partisan, he dismissed their findings that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the word intelligence in quotes. ..."
"... In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United States in the 21st century transcend international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges must remain equally adaptive and transformative." ..."
Former Obama adviser calls Trump decision on Nat Sec panel 'stone cold crazy'
President Donald Trump's decision to reorganize the National Security Council in a way that removes the director of intelligence
and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is "stone cold crazy," former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sunday.
Rice retweeted another Twitter user, P.E. Juan, who said: "Trump loves and trusts the military so much he just kicked them out
of the National Security Council and put a Nazi in their place."
Rice, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, was reacting to an executive order signed by Trump that said that the
head of DNI and the nation's most senior military officer would be invited to attend the security meetings "where issues pertaining
to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed."
"This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy. Who needs military advice or intell to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan,
DPRK?" Rice tweeted, with DPRK referring to North Korea.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC News Rice's comments were "clearly inappropriate language from a former ambassador."
DNI James Clapper was always included in Obama administration's NSC principals' meetings, CNN confirmed.
In contrast, Trump's order makes his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, a regular member of the Principals Committee. The committee
is Cabinet-level group of agencies that deal with national security that was established by President George H. W. Bush in 1989.
Every version of it has included the Joint Chiefs chairman and the director of the CIA or, once it was established, the head of the
DNI. The President's chief of staff was typically included as well.
Bannon's presence reinforces the notion he is, in essence, a co-chief of staff alongside Reince Priebus, and demonstrates the
breadth of influence the former head of Breitbart News has in the Trump administration.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, offered praise for the administration's national security team writ large, but expressed concerns
about Bannon.
"I think the national security team around President Trump is very impressive. I don't think you could ask for a better one,"
he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"I am worried about the national security council who are the members of it and who are the permanent members of it. The appointment
of Mr. Bannon is something which is a radical departure from any national security council in history," he said. "It's of concern
this quote reorganization."
Rice continued her tweetstorm: "Chairman of Joint Chiefs and DNI treated as after thoughts in Cabinet level principals meetings.
And where is CIA?? Cut out of everything?"
And she noted a provision that would allow Vice President Michael Pence to chair NSC meetings if Trump isn't available.
"Pence may chair NSC mtgs in lieu of POTUS," Rice tweeted. "Never happened w/Obama."
And she added the observation that Trump's UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was "sidelined from
Cabinet and Sub Cab mtgs."
The NSC is run by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency until he was asked
to step down in 2014 by senior intelligence leaders.
There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence community , though during a January
22 visit to the CIA Trump declared that "nobody feels stronger about the intelligence community than Donald Trump," adding that "I
love you. I respect you."
Before then, the President had argued that intelligence services were politically partisan, he dismissed their findings that
Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the
word intelligence in quotes.
In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United States in the 21st century transcend
international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges
must remain equally adaptive and transformative."
Regular members of the Principals Committee will include the secretary of state, the treasury secretary, the defense secretary,
the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, the assistant to the President and chief of staff, the assistant to the
President and chief strategist, the national security adviser and the Homeland Security adviser.
"... There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence community ..."
"... the President had argued that intelligence services were politically partisan, he dismissed their findings that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the word intelligence in quotes. ..."
"... In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United States in the 21st century transcend international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges must remain equally adaptive and transformative." ..."
Former Obama adviser calls Trump decision on Nat Sec panel 'stone cold crazy'
President Donald Trump's decision to reorganize the National Security Council in a way that
removes the director of intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is "stone cold
crazy," former National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Sunday.
Rice retweeted another Twitter user, P.E. Juan, who said: "Trump loves and trusts the military so
much he just kicked them out of the National Security Council and put a Nazi in their place."
Rice, President Barack Obama's national security adviser, was reacting to an executive order
signed by Trump that said that the head of DNI and the nation's most senior military officer
would be invited to attend the security meetings "where issues pertaining to their
responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed."
"This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy. Who needs military advice or intell to make
policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK?" Rice tweeted, with DPRK referring to North Korea.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer told ABC News Rice's comments were "clearly
inappropriate language from a former ambassador."
DNI James Clapper was always included in Obama administration's NSC principals' meetings, CNN
confirmed.
In contrast, Trump's order makes his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, a regular member of the
Principals Committee. The committee is Cabinet-level group of agencies that deal with national
security that was established by President George H. W. Bush in 1989. Every version of it has
included the Joint Chiefs chairman and the director of the CIA or, once it was established, the
head of the DNI. The President's chief of staff was typically included as well.
Bannon's presence reinforces the notion he is, in essence, a co-chief of staff alongside
Reince Priebus, and demonstrates the breadth of influence the former head of Breitbart News has
in the Trump administration.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, offered praise for the administration's national security team
writ large, but expressed concerns about Bannon.
"I think the national security team around President Trump is very impressive. I don't think
you could ask for a better one," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"I am worried about the national security council who are the members of it and who are the
permanent members of it. The appointment of Mr. Bannon is something which is a radical departure
from any national security council in history," he said. "It's of concern this quote
reorganization."
Rice continued her tweetstorm: "Chairman of Joint Chiefs and DNI treated as after thoughts in
Cabinet level principals meetings. And where is CIA?? Cut out of everything?"
And she noted a provision that would allow Vice President Michael Pence to chair NSC meetings
if Trump isn't available.
"Pence may chair NSC mtgs in lieu of POTUS," Rice tweeted. "Never happened w/Obama."
And she added the observation that Trump's UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the former governor of
South Carolina, was "sidelined from Cabinet and Sub Cab mtgs."
The NSC is run by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense
Intelligence Agency until he was asked to step down in 2014 by senior intelligence leaders.
There has been running tension between the Trump administration and the intelligence
community
, though during a January 22 visit to the CIA Trump declared that "nobody feels
stronger about the intelligence community than Donald Trump," adding that "I love you. I respect
you."
Before then,
the President had argued that intelligence services were politically
partisan, he dismissed their findings that Russia hacked Democratic targets during the campaign
and referred slightingly to the intelligence community by tweeting with the word intelligence in
quotes.
In setting out the reorganization, Trump said that "security threats facing the United
States in the 21st century transcend international boundaries. Accordingly, the United States
Government's decision-making structures and processes to address these challenges must remain
equally adaptive and transformative."
Regular members of the Principals Committee will include the secretary of state, the treasury
secretary, the defense secretary, the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, the
assistant to the President and chief of staff, the assistant to the President and chief
strategist, the national security adviser and the Homeland Security adviser.
As President Donald Trump prepares - in the words of his
chief of staff - "a buffet of options" for dealing with
Mexico, trade and immigration, it's time for the Texas
congressional delegation to make a strong statement in
support of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Though much of Trump's focus last week was on the border
wall (and ways to make Mexico pay for it), his focus next
week is expected to be on trade.
"President Trump has taken his first steps toward an
'America first' approach to international trade, pulling out
of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday and reaffirming
his intent to renegotiate NAFTA, the North American Free
Trade Agreement," the Boston Globe reports. "What does this
mean for U.S. companies and American workers? Trump's
executive order to withdraw from the TPP is anticlimactic.
That agreement was already a dead-letter, having been
disclaimed by both presidential candidates and never ratified
by Congress. But a new NAFTA could upend U.S.-Mexican
relations and disrupt whole sectors of the US economy."
And that would be disastrous for Texas.
Texas companies, big and small, export a total of $92.5
billion worth of goods to Mexico each year. That figure
dwarfs second-place California, which exports just $26.8
billion of goods.
"From the booming border city of Laredo to the bustling
trading hub of Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas has become the
nation's top exporter of goods, according to the Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Mexico is its biggest customer,"
the Wall Street Journal explains. "Some 382,000 jobs in Texas
alone depend on trade with Mexico, according to 2014 data
released this month by the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, a nonpartisan global research group.
Goods exported from Texas help support more than a million
jobs across the U.S., according to the U.S. Commerce
Department."
Texas' top exports to Mexico are computer and electronic
products, petroleum and coal products, chemicals, machinery
and transportation equipment.
As University of Oregon economist Mark Thoma points out,
"NAFTA isn't the problem, and tariffs aren't the answer."
He says Trump believes that NAFTA is the reason the U.S.
has lost manufacturing jobs. But that's not the case, he
explains.
"Domestic manufacturing's employment decline began long
before NAFTA came along," Thoma wrote for CBS News.
"According to University of California Berkeley professor
Brad DeLong's calculations, 'A sector of the economy that
provided three out of 10 nonfarm jobs at the start of the
1950s and one in four nonfarm jobs at the start of the 1970s
now provides fewer than one in 11 nonfarm jobs today.
Proportionally, the United States has shed almost two-thirds
of relative manufacturing employment since 1971.' In
addition, much of that drop can be attributed to
technological change - the rise of robots and digital
technology - rather than globalization. Renegotiating trade
agreements can't change this."
It's time for the Texas delegation to Washington to stand
up and say they won't support Trump's short-sighted attempts
to kill NAFTA. Ditching NAFTA would be a mistake.
What is the answer? Seems to me that 'liberal' economists are
convinced that they know what we should NOT be doing, but
come up short on proposals that will actually solve the
problem.
All the focus on blaming trade for loss of manufacturing
distracts from the real conversation needed: How can we
better address the dislocation of workers due to advances in
technology?
Trump and the right blame trade and believe
that better trade policies or tariffs or "shaking up the
markets?" will miraculously bring back coal mining and
manufacturing.
The anti-NAFTA left is focusing on the ant and ignoring
the elephant. This enables Trump by placing all focus on
trade. Why focus on government programs to help the
dislocated if the dislocation problem can be fixed by
renegotiating NAFTA? Serious ideas such as green energy jobs
are dismissed in favor of fixing trade instead. The
conversation will never turn to real solutions about how
modern manufacturing jobs increasingly require computer
skills, education and training.
Most small towns have lost jobs because the manufacturers
they do have are hiring fewer workers or not net expanding
their workforce. At the same time, service sector jobs remain
low pay and much opposition to raising minimum wage or
Obamacare to provide them with health insurance.
Having the comparative data on manufacturing employment as a
percent of total employment for the United States, Canada,
United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands,
Australia and Japan, running from 1970 through 2012, what is
striking is the similarity of pattern.
Also striking is the
relation between gains in manufacturing productivity and
decline in percent manufacturing employment in the United
States.
Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman would appear to
be right about trade relations having fairly little to do
with the long term decline of percent of employment in
manufacturing in the United States or other developed
countries.
What Happened to Automation and Robots: WaPo Tells of
Labor Shortage in Japan
Wow, things just keep getting worse. Automation is taking
all the jobs, and the aging of the population means we won't
have any workers. Yes, these are completely contradictory
concerns, but no one ever said that our policy elite had a
clue. (No, I'm not talking about Donald Trump's gang here.)
Anyhow, the Washington Post had a front page story *
telling us how older people are now working at retirement
homes in Japan as a result of the aging of its population.
The piece includes this great line:
"That means authorities need to think about ways to keep
seniors healthy and active for longer, but also about how to
augment the workforce to cope with labor shortages."
You sort of have to love the first part, since folks might
have thought authorities would have always been trying to
think about ways to keep seniors healthy and active longer.
After all, isn't this a main focus of public health policy?
The part about labor shortages is also interesting. When
there is a shortage of oil or wheat the price rises. If there
were a labor shortage in Japan then we should be seeing
rapidly rising wages. We aren't. Wages have been virtually
flat in recent years. That would seem to indicate that Japan
doesn't have a labor shortage -- or alternatively it has
economically ignorant managers who don't realize that the way
to attract workers is to offer higher pay.
As The Hill reports
, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on Sunday
said the president's executive order barring refugees and people from seven
majority-Muslim nations does not affect green card holders.
"We didn't overrule the Department of Homeland Security,
as far as green card holders moving
forward, it doesn't affect them,"
Priebus said on NBC's "Meet The
Press."
But Priebus noted if a person is traveling back and forth to one of the seven
countries included in that order, that person is likely to be "subjected temporarily
with more questioning until a better program is put in place."
"We don't want people that are traveling back and forth to one of these
seven countries that harbor terrorists to be traveling freely back and forth between
the United States and those countries,"
he said.
When pressed further on whether the order impacts green card holders, though, Priebus
appeared to reverse himself, saying, "Well, of course it does."
"If you're traveling back and forth, you're going to be subjected to
further screening,
" he said.
Furthermore, Priebus also said more countries could be added to the list already
included in the president's executive order.
"Perhaps other countries needed
to be added to an executive order going forward,"
he said.
"But in order to do this in a way that was expeditious, in a way that would pass
muster quickly, we used the 7 countries that have already been codified and
identified."
As we noted yesterday, of the seven countries that are on the banned list, we note
that the United States is actvely bombing five of them.
maybe he didn't include saudi arabia because he is a genius.
couldn't do it on the first go, but if enough people raise their
voice about that exclusion, he will be like, what do you think
folks, should I include SA? Ok, done!
The seven countries listed were already defined by the Obama
administration as principle threats, which is WHY Trump used them in
his EO of his FIRST WEEK in office. This is part of his campaign
agenda and using Obama policy was the fastest way to get it started.
You can also bet that there are PLENTY of government employees who
will do their best to make ANY such policy an embarrassment.
(f)
Suspension
of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens
or of any class of aliens into the United States would be
detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by
proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary,
suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as
immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens
any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the
Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed
to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating
to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent
documents used by passengers traveling to the United States
(including the training of personnel in such detection), the
Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens
transported to the United States by such airline.
Standard Disclaimer: How long do you think those planes
will keep flying when hit with a million dollar a day fee?
10M? 100M?
Or do the words "any restrictions he may deem to be
appropriate." still fail to register within that pea-sized
brain of yours.
Trump banned 7 countries who produced not a single terrorist attack on US
soil, but Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Russian, Indian and Israeli Muslims are
not in the list, such are uselessness. What about US jail system, it seems
to produce more Muslims than the immigration. Even USA army produced more
terrorists than the 7 countries.
I came here to accuse you of being full of shit but the first few were
somalia, afghanistan, pakistan. not going to dig deeper because the
conclusion is obvious - we just need a full blown muslim ban.
Where the Trump admin is clumsy, inexperience
and naive is in thinking that every move they will make will NOT be used as
an opportunity to assassinate them politically and in PR terms.
The fight happens mainly in the media, for voters minds anyway.
Trump admin should learn this. Fast.
P.S. The decision was just fucking stupid. Non-muslim, non-refugee PhDs
who've been working for US tech/aerospace/finance/medical industry were left
stranded. I'm not sure that Bubba from Alabama or Joe from Flint would get
those jobs, even if Trump kicked out every single foreign PhD working in the
US. Also, Silicon Valley would totally tank, if that happened. It was just a
stupid move. Stupid.
I think what you're missing here, along with many others, is that
this administration DOES NOT CARE what the MSM thinks. They can fabricate
all the protests and memes they want, the administration will just shrug
and say "whatever".
W said he "had a mandate", then did half-steps. Obama said he "had a
mandate" , then didn't do any of it (close Gitmo, close black sites, end
the middle east wars (hell, he more than doubled the middle east
entanglements!)), Trump isn't even bothering to say he has a mandate,
he's just proceeding as if it's a given.
So go ahead and rage MSM and associated protesters, but I doubt it'll
do you any good.
The only way for him to avoid that from occuring would be to turn over
the office to them and not make any decision they have not given approval
to.
The effectiveness of their PR using the msm and their protest
events will lessen if Trump ignores them and makes moves quickly and
moves on. They will have difficulty getting attention over last months
news - Unless they get more destructive or violent.
Sorry BigFat, I like Ron Paul as much as you do, but his Libertarian Foreign
Policy viewpoint on the Islamic issue is COMPLETELY naive. They want to
establish a caliphate REGARDLESS whether they are bombed or not. They are
inextricably linked to following what the Koran says about murdering
Christians and Jews and establishing Sharia Law to dominate and subdue
unbelievers (yes even naive Libertarians).... goodness me bro, educate
yourself. Watch this school in Britain that is teaching students crazy
Sharia Law viewpoints and ask yourself if these people in its current form
are really compatible with Western Society:
It took Charles Martel "The Hammer" to put a stop to the Islamist creed
of conquering Europe after the Moors completely took over Spain and were
headed north towards France and the rest of last vestiges of the West. It
looks as if we need a revival of his bloodline in order to really bring
about peace and security in the West.
Criminal factions in the USA created ISIS. The American people are
trying to undo that crime and bring those responsible to justice. This
ain't gonna happen in a week.
No, you are wrong, VISAS and Green Cards are NOT "Forever documents"
granting the holder full citizenship or voting rights. It CAN be suspended
for ANY reason deemed proper under the ALREADY WRITTEN LAWS. The President
can suspend ANY entry:
"8 US Code 1182 Inadmissable Aliens
Section (10) (f)
Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of
any class of aliens
into the United States would be detrimental to
the interests of the United States,
he may by proclamation, and for
such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or
any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry
of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
Whenever
the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply
with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of
airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers
traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such
detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens
transported to the United States by such airline."
Additionally, theree can be action that can be taken on any airline or
transporter that accepts fradulent documents for admission. The United
States Law on immigration was NEVER get here stay here. WE get to choose
and it is NOT for democrats or globalists or elitiets to make that call. It
is .... wait for it.... wait for it...
WE THE (FUCKING) PEOPLE. WE DECIDE. Not a bunch of libtards that gave
up on America.
The fact that even Green Card holders
are aliens (with legal permanent residence in the US) is clear. A Green
Card expirs after 10 years, you can apply for another 10 years, but then
either become a citizen or leave the country. I understand that.
I was referring to the 90-day ban in the executive order. The
executive order appears to me - among many other things - to imply, for
example, that all Green Card holders, say, from Iran that just left the
US for, say, a week to go on vacation (but have otherwise lived and
worked here for years) will be barred from re-entering the US for a
period of 90 days until various objectives in the executive order are
worked out.
From Trump's executive order, Sec. 3. (c): '... I hereby proclaim that
the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens
from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA, 8 U.S.C.
1187(a)(12), would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,
and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and
nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order'
The way I read this is that if I am a Green Card holder from Syria who
has lived in the US for the past 17 years and has studied and worked
here, but who went on vacation to Venice, Italy, I WILL BE (no exception)
barred from re-entering the US for 90 days. While your quote of 8 U.S.C.
1182(f) appears to indicate that the president can do exactly that I
still think it is not clear cut from a legal perspective. We will see. If
I am wrong I am wrong. I maintain that the Trump administration did not
think through this executive order carefully. We can reconvene in the
near future once this initial transient period is over to see where we
are.
You obviously don't understand the size and scope of the problems this
administration is inheriting. Your agenda is clear. Bash Trump at every turn
and deflect from Obama's disastrous policies.
I find it interesting that you claim that my agenda is clear from just
reading one of my posts. That is not enough information that would allow
you make such a grand claim. Maybe you should go back and only claim
things, for which you have sufficient evidence. BTW, in my original post
I actually do bash the previous administration.
ANOTHER OBAMA DHS SCREW UP: 20,000 GREEN CARDS HANDED OUT LIKE CANDY
In the latest instance of the Obama administration's neglect and
indifference toward America's immigration problem, around 20,000 green cards
have been wrongly distributed or contained false information.
The DHS report highlights that at least 19,000 green cards were issued with
either incorrect information or sent in duplicate, while the USCIS also
received over 200,000 complaints that cards had either been sent to the wrong
address or not received at all.
Furthermore, the OIG report found that over 2,400 immigrants who had only
been cleared for two-year conditional residence status were inadvertently
issued cards that don't expire for 10 years.
Oh, and BTW, these countries
where Drumpf has businesses or business interests are exempt:
1. Saudi Arabia
2. United Arab Emirates
3, Turkey
4. Indonesia
Of course, no terrorists ever came from those nations. Oh,
wait...
It's one thing to try to tighten immigration overview.
Quite another to knee-jerk your way into an international
political blow-up with a fucked-up bull-in-china-shop
approach to strategy and tactics.
1. Saudi Arabia is the centerpiece of the petrodollar. An attack on Saudi
Arabia is an attack on the dollar and worthy of a military response. Nixon and
Kissinger laid the foundation of this monetary order and Carter made it very
clear about US defending Saudi Arabia.
2. UAE is a key ally of Saudi Arabia.
3. Turkey is a key NATO member, contributing a large percentage of troops
and vehicles, and also controls a key outlet for Russian warships based in
Crimea.
4. Indonesia controls the Strait of Malacca, a strategic chokepoint for oil
headed to East Asia.
I would refer everyone complaining about KSA and friends not being on the
list to your post.
Become self-sufficient (money/energy/manufacturing not
critically dependant on others), then you can tell KSA what you really think
of them. With all the winning these days, maybe it's not so far-fetched a
dream...
It's a difficult issue. We can't have our cake and eat it too. Some risk must be
accepted in order to remain within the law. Obama issued these visas and we have
to abide by them and that is that. We can not have witch hunts in this country.
Fortunately going forward, we can refuse new visas. And what is taking President
Trump so long to ban new border crossing "refugee" claims? That is actually a
more pressing issue.
It is not a matter of we vs. them, it's we vs. us. This Administration is proving
in 7 days to be rank amateurs.
So many statements and decrees have been walked
back, cancelled or corrected. No one thinks these things through or understands
what is lawful or possible.
So many statements and numbers have been proven objectively wrong and changed
on the fly.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, he cannot be trusted.
The Administration appointees and the Vampire Squid already control more wealth
than 1/3rd of the population.
Today we learn that the National Security Council has been downsized so as not
to include the Dec Def, or White House Security Adviser. A joke that only
President Paranoid can love.
When will the loyalists realize we have been PUNKED by this Administration?
Good thing there's no Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, nor anti-Western Jihadis in
Turkey, etc.
What I want to know is - regarding the drone ordering, cakewalk
promising, WMD swearing terrorists who started all shit to begin with - when will
they
be banned permanently from sunlight and fresh air?
Do you really think for a moment that Google is so desperate to hire good
programmers that it needs to recruit from Syria/Iraq/etc???
The Obama
administration and its henchmen for years has preyed upon the generosity of
businesses like those in Silicon Valley, to get them to hire from these Muslim
countries. This is how a Muslim governs. Obama did this with the express intent
of cirumventing any limitations on refugees, this way their status was immediately
legal.
This is a Muslim invasion. They are not refugees. And Islam is an evil cult,
which should not be given the title of 'religion'.
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in
the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison
This story is about an investigation by George Webb that
takes us back to the Dulles Brothers and the birth of the CIA in 1947. It
includes a cast of characters, entities, and events leading up to Snowden;
including Booze Allen; the Carlie Group; the Enron scandal; Kosovo; Somalia;
Argentina; East Timor; the Clinton Foundation in Haiti; Hillary's arming of ISIS,
and destruction of Libya. And then there's the FALSE FLAG attack on Syria, using
Sarin Gas from Libya, for which Assad was blamed.
Webb began investigating of the Clinton Foundation and has
descended into a labyrinth of a Rabbit hole. Be assured the prima facie evidence
against Hillary in Libya and the Foundation, including Bill, is overwhelming.
If you are interested in the depth of the Rabbit Hole and the
psychopaths within, please see:
Good point. Much as I disagree with both bombing Muslims and
denying refugees, it is refreshing to see a president
actually try to accomplish what he believes in...after eight
years of a president who just shrugged his shoulders, told us
it can't be done, and that Americans should just suck it
up...the jobs are never coming back!
What 'liberal's fail
to understand is that Trump probably cares less about whether
he succeeds in banning Muslim immigrants and is more
concerned about how deplorables perceive how hard he is
trying.
If Obama and Hillary had tried half as hard as Trump to
accomplish things that working Americans wanted, then Trump
wouldn't be president. It is tragic that Democrats were more
interested in rolling over and having their bellies rubbed by
wealthy and powerful interests than beating their heads
against the wall for American workers.
In one way, the things that Trump is doing are similar to
what other newly elected presidents have done. In their first
weeks they try to reward the base voters by pushing through a
huge number of changes that are high on those voters'
agendas. Then they turn back to more normal, professional,
DC-oriented politics.
But in this case, we might not get a
return to normal. Possibly the most worrisome thing he is
done yet is put the lunatic cretin Bannon on the NSC, and
demote the Joint Chiefs and DNI. He's creating his own little
radical, ideological national security directorate of
wild-eyed, amateur outsiders and Holy Warriors.
He has already started a process for reviewing the US's
ISIS policies, including looking for ways to avoid
international law constraints. I expect that within a
relatively short time, he will launch a major, ruthless
military blitz against ISIS. He will team up with Putin to do
it. It will be combined with a domestic campaign of
persecution and intimidation directed against various kinds
of Muslims and non-Muslim political dissidents.
Trump believes he's the head of a movement, one that
overthrew the Republican establishment and faces unyielding
opposition from the press.
It's the economic and cultural nationalism of Jeff
Sessions and Bannon etc. He's a populist which is why he is
concerned with how popular he is. It's why the size of crowds
matters to him. It's why it matters whether or not he won the
popular vote. It's why he tweets directly at his supporters.
He repeatedly called Iraq a disaster on the campaign
trail. Many of his voters agree. I don't see him putting
boots on the ground, at least not for any extended period of
time or for an occupation. He's isolationist. America First.
They want to withdraw from the world, from alliances.
His Defense Secretary Mattis says torture doesn't work and
Trump said he'll defer to him. We'll see. Yes he'll probably
do some sort of military adventure but it will be drawn up by
Mattis and the generals. He'll declare victory and go home
and change the subject. When all is said and done he's a
real-estate developer and a con man. He'll use bombing ISIS
as a distraction. I see him as more like Berlusconi. Corrupt.
How many of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia? So if
all but one came from that country the travel ban on people
from 7 countries must certainly include Saudi Arabia, right?
No apparently not - because it could hurt Trumps personal
business deals. The criteria to select countries for this
cruel and completely unnecessary travel ban (leaving many
students at american universities stranded in their home
countries) has apparently not been designed based on actual
likelihood of terrorism.
Judge Blocks Trump Order on Refugees Amid Chaos
and Outcry Worldwide
https://nyti.ms/2jHS6tQ
NYT - MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NICHOLAS KULISH and ALAN FEUER - Jan
28
WASHINGTON - A federal judge in Brooklyn came to the aid
of scores of refugees and others who were trapped at airports
across the United States on Saturday after an executive order
signed by President Trump, which sought to keep many
foreigners from entering the country, led to chaotic scenes
across the globe.
The judge's ruling blocked part of the president's
actions, preventing the government from deporting some
arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the presidential
order. But it stopped short of letting them into the country
or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr.
Trump's actions. ...
In a rare middle-of-the night decision, two federal judges
in Boston temporarily halted President Trump's executive
order blocking immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations
from entering the United States.
At 1:51 a.m., Judge Allison Burroughs and Magistrate Judge
Judith Dein imposed a seven-day restraining order against
Trump's executive order, clearing the way for lawful
immigrants from the seven barred nations – Iran, Iraq, Yemen,
Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Syria – to enter the US.
"It's a great victory today," said Susan Church, a lawyer who
argued the case in court. "What's most important about today
is this is what makes America great, the fact that we have
the rule of law."
The ruling prohibits federal officials from detaining or
deporting immigrants and refugees with valid visas or green
cards or forcing them to undergo extra security screenings
based solely on Trump's order. The judges also instructed
Customs and Border Protection to notify airlines overseas
that it is safe to put immigrants on US-bound flights. ...
Judge Who Blocked Trump's Refugee Order Praised
for 'Firm Moral Compass'
https://nyti.ms/2jDI930
NYT - CHRISTOPHER MELE - January 29, 2017
The federal judge who blocked part of President Trump's
executive order on immigration on Saturday night worked for
years in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where she
was one of the lead prosecutors on the high-profile Tyco
International fraud trial.
Colleagues remembered the judge, Ann M. Donnelly, as an
astute lawyer unfazed by the spotlight. She found herself in
its glare unexpectedly on Saturday night, when she heard an
emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union
challenging the executive order barring refugees. She granted
a temporary stay, ordering that refugees and others detained
at airports across the United States not be sent back to
their home countries.
Enforcing Mr. Trump's order by sending the travelers home
could cause them "irreparable harm," Judge Donnelly ruled.
The order, just before 9 p.m., capped an intense day of
protests across the country by opponents of the order, which
suspended the entry of all refugees to the United States for
120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocked
entry for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim
countries. ...
Protest Grows 'Out of Nowhere' at Kennedy Airport
After Iraqis Are Detained
https://nyti.ms/2jDgKhA
NYT - ELI ROSENBERG - January 28, 2017
It began in the morning, with a small crowd chanting and
holding cardboard signs outside Kennedy International
Airport, upset by the news that two Iraqi refugees had been
detained inside because of President Trump's executive order.
By the end of the day, the scattershot group had swelled
to an enormous crowd.
They filled the sidewalks outside the terminal and packed
three stories of a parking garage across the street, a mass
of people driven by emotion to this far-flung corner of the
city, singing, chanting and unfurling banners.
This was the most public expression of the intense
reaction generated across the country by Mr. Trump's
polarizing decision. While those in some areas of the country
were cheered (#) by the executive order, the reaction was
markedly different for many in New York. References to the
Statue of Liberty and its famous inscription became a
rallying cry.
Similar protests erupted at airports around the country.
Word of the protest at Kennedy first filtered out on
social media from the immigrant-advocacy groups Make the Road
New York and the New York Immigration Coalition. It seemed
like it might stay small.
But the drama seemed to rise throughout the day. ...
#- Trump's Immigration Ban Draws Deep Anger
and Muted Praise
https://nyti.ms/2jBezLG
NYT - RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA - Jan 28, 2017
A group of Nobel Prize winners said it would damage
American leadership in higher education and research. House
Speaker Paul D. Ryan and some relatives of Americans killed
in terrorist attacks said it was right on target. An
evangelical Christian group called it an affront to human
dignity.
The reaction on Saturday to President Trump's ban on
refugees entering the United States, with particular focus on
certain Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa, was
swift, certain - and sharply divided.
The order drew sharp and widespread condemnation Saturday
from Democrats, religious groups, business leaders, academics
and others, who called it inhumane, discriminatory and akin
to taking a "wrecking ball to the Statue of Liberty."
Thousands of professors, including several Nobel laureates,
signed a statement calling it a "major step towards
implementing the stringent racial and religious profiling
promised on the campaign trail." ...
'Give me your tired, your poor:' The story behind the Statue
of Liberty's famous immigration poem
http://ti.me/2keeIFr
Time - Katie Reilly - January 28, 2017
In the wake of
President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration
Friday, many critics quickly took up a familiar rallying cry,
lifting words from the Statue of Liberty that have for
decades represented American immigration: "Give me your
tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free."
Former independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin,
Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison and former Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright all invoked those words - written by
American author and poet Emma Lazarus in 1883 - as they
condemned Trump's suspension of the country's refugee
assistance program. ...
The poet James Russell Lowell said he liked the poem "much
better than I like the Statue itself" because it "gives its
subject a raison d'être which it wanted before," according to
the New York Times.
"Emma Lazarus was the first American to make any sense of
this statue," Esther Schor, who wrote a biography on Lazarus,
told the Times in 2011. ...
"Wherever there is humanity, there is the theme for a
great poem," she once said, according to the Jewish Women's
Archives.
The poem was later published in New York World and the New
York Times, just a few years before Lazarus died in 1887.
The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York in 1885 and was
officially unveiled in 1886, but Lazarus' poem did not become
famous until years later, when in 1901, it was rediscovered
by her friend Georgina Schuyler. In 1903, the last lines of
the poem were engraved on a plaque and placed on the pedestal
of the Statue of Liberty, where it remains today.
The poem, in its entirety, is below:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
"... By Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist, was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders, and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in Feel The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on Citizens' Media TV ..."
"... "to be in the tank is to be "lovingly enthralled; foolishly enraptured; passionately bedazzled"" ..."
"... Today, the President announced a major new step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy families. ..."
Posted on
January 28, 2017 by
Yves Smith By
Naked Capitalism reader aliteralmind, aka Jeff Epstein. Jeff, a progressive activist and journalist,
was one of only around forty candidates in the county to be personally endorsed by Bernie Sanders,
and was a pledged delegate for him at the DNC. Jeff is also currently starring in
Feel
The Bern-The Musical , which will very soon be performed in New York. Originally posted on
Citizens'
Media TV
But while it is technically true that Trump did sign the order reversing the decrease, it is a
misleading picture. This story is more a negative reflection on President Obama than it is on Trump.
A Brief Tutorial From Someone Who Is Learning the Subject Right Along With You
Generally speaking, if you are a first time homebuyer and purchase a house with a down payment
of less than 20% of the home's worth, you are required to purchase mortgage insurance. This insurance
is to protect the the lender in case you default on your payments.
Let's use the example of a $200,000 home with a $10,000 (5%) down payment. So you need to borrow
$190,000.
And then every year, you pay the annual premium of $1,520.
$190,000 * .008 = $1,520
As you pay off your principal, this number goes down.
The
Obama administration's reduction of the annual premium rate is .25 points (the upfront premium
remains unchanged). So with the same loan above, your annual premium would instead be $1,045.
.008 - .0025 = .0055
$190,000 * .0055 = $1,045
That's a savings of $475 a year, or about $40 a month.
$1,520 - $1,045 = $475
$475 / 12 months = $39.59
Backlash Against Trump
The criticism of Trump for this move has been unrelenting and, at least in my internet bubble,
unanimous. I have not seen any criticism of the Obama administration at all; including by, disappointingly,
one of my primary sources of news, The Young Turks. (Can't find the video at the moment, but they
briefly criticized Trump for the move, without looking further into the issue.)
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Friday that Trump's words in his inaugural
speech "ring hollow" following the mortgage premium action.
"In one of his first acts as president, President Trump made it harder for Americans to afford
a mortgage," he said. "What a terrible thing to do to homeowners. Actions speak louder than
words."
"This action is completely out of alignment with President Trump's words about having the government
work for the people," said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition,
through a spokesman. "Exactly how does raising the cost of buying a home help average people?"
Sarah Edelman, director of housing policy for the left-leaning Center for American Progress,
in an e-mail wrote, "On Day 1, the president has turned his back on middle-class families - this
decision effectively takes $500 out of the pocketbooks of families that were planning to buy a
home in 2017. This is not the way to build a strong economy."
"Donald Trump's inaugural speech proclaimed he will govern for the people, instead of the political
elite," [Liz Ryan Murray, policy director for national grassroots advocacy group People's Action]
said. "But minutes after giving this speech, he gave Wall Street a big gift at the expense of
everyday people. Trump may talk a populist game, but policies like this make life better for hedge
fund managers and big bankers like his nominee for Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, not for everyday
people."
The Full Picture
To say that Trump took savings away from the neediest of homebuyers is not true, because homebuyers
never had the savings to begin with. The rate reduction was not
announced until January 9 of this year–11 days before the end of Obama's eight year term–and
was not set to take effect until January 27, a full week after Trump was sworn in.
In addition, Obama's reduction decision seems to have been made without any advance notice or
even a projection document justifying the decrease.
As I understand it
, both of these things are unusual with a change of this magnitude.
Finally, with the announcement made little more than a week before the new administration was
to be sworn in, and despite Trump being entirely responsible for implementing this change, the incoming
administration was not consulted.
Trump, who claimed a populist mantle in his first speech as a president, signed the executive
order less than an hour after leaving the inaugural stage. It reverses an Obama-era policy.
"Obama-era policy" implies the reduction was made long ago, and has been in force for much of
that time.
(Rates can't be raised if they were never lowered.)
Conclusion: It Was a Set Up
Finally. After eight years of hard work and multiple requests, your boss approaches you on
a Monday morning and says, "Good news! Starting in two weeks, I'm giving you a raise. Congratulations."
Two days later, you find out that he decided to leave the company months ago, and his final
day is Friday. Your raise doesn't start until a week after that.
You ask him about your new boss. "Well, he's a pretty strict guy." He leans in, puts the back
of his hand to the side of his mouth, lowers his voice, and continues, "Honesty, I hear he is
a bit difficult to work with. Real penny pincher." He sits up, his voice back to its normal cadence,
"But don't worry. I'm leaving a note on his desk telling him just how important this raise is
to you and your family." He stands up and slaps you on the back as he walks away. "I'm sure he'll
keep my word."
If that were me, I would be upset at my new boss, but I would be furious at my old one. He
had eight years to do something.
This was nothing more than an opportunistic political maneuver by the outgoing president, to set
the incoming president up for failure. All while pretending to care about American homeowners. If
the President Obama really wanted to help Americans, he would've considered this move–or something
similar–long ago. Instead, he told them he was giving them a gift and promised that it would be delivered
by Trump, knowing full well that he would never follow through. Lower-income Americans were used
as pawns in a cheap political game.
"The Trump administration would be accused on day one of raising mortgage costs for average
Americans if it reverses the FHA move," analyst Jaret Seiberg, managing director at Cowen Group
Inc., wrote in a note to clients. "Trump's career has been real estate. It would seem out of
character for him to be aggressively negative on real estate in his first week in office."
[ ]
"I have no reason to believe this will be scaled back," [HUD Secretary Julian] Castro told
reporters. The premium cut "offers a good benefit to hardworking American families out there
at a time when interest rates might well continue to go up."
It is not Trump's responsibility to keep the promises that Obama makes on his way out the door.
It is Obama's responsibility to not promise what is not promiseable.
There are so many things for progressives to criticize Trump about. This is not one of them.
So Who Are We Fighting Anyway?
To paraphrase Jimmy Dore ,
"The way to oppose Trump is to agree with him when he's right, and to fight him when he's wrong.
Anything else delegitimizes you, especially in the eyes of his supporters."
And again in another of his videos
: "We don't need to unite against Trump. We need to unite against corruption and corporatism."
If Democrats do something wrong, we need to fight them. If Trump does something wrong, we need
to fight him. If Trump does something right, we need to stand with him.
If we can't win with the truth, we don't deserve to win.
I agree with the sentiment but after watching the D party protest war under Bush, never talk
about it under Obama, and then cheerlead for it with Hillary I don't think they actually stand
for anything except identity politics.
Right, they traded support for real issues for identity politics. Identity politics which is
lovingly celebrated on TYT every day by the way. I'm not sure how or why anyone would go to that
rancid cesspool of biased disinformation for news, but ok.
Here is a litmus test: anyone who gave a pro forma endorsement of Hillary OK, understandable,
and I can kind of tolerate that. But for the others who were in the tank for Hillary like TYT–all
except for Jimmy Dore–those people are persona non grata from here out.
Totally disagree that TYT was in the tank for Hillary. Have watched these guys every day since
around May. They're all pro-Bernie. They clearly wanted Hillary over Trump during the general
(and I did too, but that's waaaaaay not to say I'm pro-Hillary), but I don't think "in the tank
for Hillary" is a fair characterization for any of them.
To me, the best evidence is that I have not witnessed Jimmy Dore being forced to tone his admittedly
louder and more vehement anti-Hillary ranting down on any show, including the main show. They
even gave him his own show around the end of the primaries where he gleefully goes off (Aggressive
Progressives).
As an aside, The Jimmy Dore Show seems fresher than Aggressive Progressives, I believe because
he rehearses the bits on own show first. On TJDS, he is frequently good, and consistently on fire.
Naked Cap, the entire TYT network, Glenn Greenwald, Le Show, and of course, Bernie Sanders,
are among my most important truth tellers.
It's not that clear cut. For instance, if you are a person of color, there was good reason
to be plenty worried about Trump. Violence against immigrants picked up big time in the UK after
Brexit, so there's a close parallel. And his appointment of Jeff Sessions as AG is hardly encouraging.
Did you see their election day coverage? Here are the highlights:
TYT meltdown .
My favorite part starts at 14m50s, when Kasparian rants about how she has no respect for women
who didn't vote for Clinton and calls them "f@#king dumb". Solidarity!
What the – ????? – like the right wing is not all about Identity Politics from an ethnic and
religious foundations .. errrrrrr .
Now that the Democrats embraced free market neoliberalism and went off the reservation with
non traditional views wrt whom could join the club, being the only thing separating the two, its
a bit wobbly to make out like there is some massive schism between the two.
Disheveled . you can't have a "dominate" economic purview running the ship for 50ish years
and then devolve into polemic political warfare ..
jgordon– Identity politics lovingly celebrated on that rancid cesspool of biased disinformation
every day. Wow, takes my breath away. I've watched the TYT evening news for ~10 months virtually
ever day and I'd guesstimate that I viewed 60 of their You Tube clips. Seems to me you're projecting.
Given your strident certitude you should have no trouble provide any links that convinced you
of your opinion, buttress your argument. The daily recurrences of "identity politics" put it out
there. What convinced you they were "in the tank for Hillary"? It'd be hard to come up with a
more inaccurate phrase. They full throatedly endorsed Sanders in the primaries. Cenk announced
on the Monday (IIRC) before that he would be voting for HRC so how do you arrive at using "in
the tank"? I found your remarks a "rancid cesspool of biased disinformation" long on emotion and
very short on facts and evidence. That's why it seems like projection.
The US support for the Saudi war in Yemen is the most clearcut example of the moral worthlessness
of many liberals. Actually, to their credit many Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress have
opposed it, but it isn't a big cause because Obama was the one doing it. I imagine Trump will
continue the policy, but don't expect anything to change– Trump can be opposed on other issues,
so there will be no incentive to criticize him on an issue when the Trump people can say they
are just continuing what Obama started.
It is infuriating to hear liberals mindlessly repeating how disgraceful it is to see Trump
cozying up with a dictator who has blood on his hands. It is the eternal sunshine of the spotless
mind with these people.
Hear, hear! Thanks to NC that Common Dreams piece set off my bs detector immediately. There's
a larger framing question we can add as well: who benefits from PMI?
Using the example above, the home buyer pays an upfront premium of $3,300 which gives them
no additional equity in their home, and somewhere between $1400 and $1500 a year for their premium,
which also doesn't increase their equity. And, they continue to pay PMI until they achieve a loan
to value ratio of 80%.
So you buy your 200K house and dutifully pay your mortgage and PMI, which, btw, is also not
tax deductible. You finally get to the point where through a combination of paying down your mortgage
and increasing home prices, you have 80% equity in your home. Then the housing market tanks, and
your 200K home is worth 170K. Your house is worth less than you paid for it and you're stuck paying
$1500 a year in fees that don't reduce the amount of your mortgage, that you can't deduct from
your taxes, and that you can't get rid of until you have 80% equity in your house.
Sign me up!
So who benefits? Certainly not the middle class would be homeowner, who not only gets screwed
on the finances, but thanks to inflation of home prices, is getting screwed on the finances so
that they can spend 200K on a crappy little ranch that's a 40 minute commute to their job one
way on a good day.
I also read about this on the Neocon/Neolib pro-war propaganda and general disinformation site
for women and manginas Huffington Post, and I have to say that they were spinning really hard
to make this look like something horrible Trump had done. But even in the extremely biased article
I read they surreptitiously had to admit that this was a rule the Obama regime had put in place
the midnight before Obama departed and that Trump was just reversing it. I read this before I
knew anything else about t he subject and already had a pretty good idea of what was going on.
But the above post helped a lot.
Finance benefits – they get to keep promoting unaffordable mortgages.
We refused to pay this BS insurance when purchasing our house, since it wan't insuring us against
anything but rather we'd be paying for the bank's insurance against ourselves. Seems a lot more
like a scam when you frame it that way, considering that the bank is lending you money they just
created in the first place.
Instead we saved up for another year or two until we had the whole 20% down required to avoid
the insurance. I do understand that not everyone can afford 20% down depending on their job and
where they live however if enough people refused both PMI and to purchase because they couldn't
afford 20% down on an overpriced house (and we are in another bubble already, at least in my area),
prices would drop until people could really afford them.
Finance pretends they are just trying to make the American Dream available to everybody and
too many have taken the bait to the point where finance as a percentage of GDP is near or at an
all time high. The reality is that it's mostly just a scam to benefit finance and turn the population
into debt slaves.
The home owner was able to purchase a home with less than 20% down. The PMI protects the lender
during default, which is considerably higher when borrower has no skin in the game. Also, there
are other options such as lender paid mi.
Additionally, most of you are confusing PMI – Private Mortgage Insurance- with FHA Upfront
and MIP. With the latter being required regardless of the down payment. Secondly, the author was
wrong on his facts. MIP is .85 @ 96.5% and .80 @ 30 years. 15 YR.terns offer reduced
PMI is another insurance company rip-off. Requiring people to escrow taxes with no interest
paid to them by the banks using those funds is another rip-off.
Trying to condense this whole article into a tweet is a challenge. . .
"Obama cuts mortg. ins. rate for <20% down by 25 pts ($500 on $200k home) 11days prior to exit
in con artist act sure to be dropped by Trump resulting in bogus media claims about Dem support
for working class homeowners."
I agree. If we Progressives are to make any fwd movement, we can't beat up on DJT on any and
everything. I am also cautioning friends & family to do so too. If cry "foul" everyou time he
acts, that delegitimizes us.
One recent example is the Trumps' arrivall @ wh b4 the inauguration. A snapshot shows DJT entering
WH before the Obamas and Mrs. DJT. Once posted, goes viral and the talk is how ill-mannered, selfish
is and how gracious the Obamas are for escorting the Mrs. after her "oafish" husband
What is not shown is that DJT stops, comes back, and ushers the trio ahead of him. (which you
can see on CSPAN ).
When I saw the truth of what happened, after reading the negative comments, that worried me.
We REALLY need to be more dis corning and employ critical thinking.
Have to be careful not to be swayed by bullshit, no matter where it comes from.
This explanation, while nice, only serves to make Trump look dumb. He jumped into an obvious
trap. Rather than focus on how Obama tricked him, I'm a bit more concerned with what this portends
for the future. See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to
avoid easy pitfalls like this, the odds of his success aren't very high.
By the way, this reads like one more zing at Obama after he's already left the building. He
earned most of the criticism he got, definitely from this site, but I feel like this is overdoing
it. Criticizing him for not doing it sooner? Totally valid. Criticizing him for tripping up his
successor? Petty.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of Schumer and Kaine isn't part of that pettiness, though. That
will be useful to remember as they cozy up to the Don and claim they're doing it to "help working
families."
I am admittedly a political newbie (Bernie woke me up never did anything before him but vote),
and perhaps I am missing something, but I would be much less upset about it if he didn't screw
middle class Americans in the process.
That this is considered petty, by which I believe you mean normal politics, is exactly the
problem.
The article makes it pretty clear, if I am reading it and the links and background right, that
the screwing is principally in the form of requiring mortgage insurance to insure THE LENDER (or
note holder or whoever MERS says gets paid on default). And that the "benefit" you may feel was
(according to the spin) "taken away," was not even an "entitlement" because it would not have
even been in effect until three weeks AFTER Obama (who has screwed the middle class and everyone
else not in the Elite, nine ways from nowhere, for 8 years), and would not change the abuse that
is PMI. And would not have "put dollars in the pockets of consumers" anyway for long after that.
And how many homeowners are in the category?
And banksters and mortgage brokers and the rest, gee whiz, we mopes are supposed to be concerned
about THEM? About people whose paydays come from commissions on the dollar amount of the loans
they write? Where all the "incentives," backed by the Real Economy that undergirds the ability
of the US Government to do its fiat money forkovers to lenders that connived to change the policies
against prudential lending to inflate the bubble that crashed and burned so many, are all once
again being pointed in the direction of making Realtors ™(c)(BS) and lenders even richer on flips
and flops and dumb transactions and churning?
Just to clarify, and please anyone correct me, this was not any kind of "rate reduction." Rate
reductions are what is supposed to happen under the various homeowner "they let
you live in their house as long as you pay the rent mortgage" relief programs
that never happened except to transfer more money to the Banksters. As in "reduce the unaffordable
interest rate on oppressive mortgages." And "mark to market." And PRINCIPAL reductions
as a result. And I do know the nominal difference between "title" states and "equitable interest"
states - in either, the note holder effectively owns the house and property until the last nickel
is paid, and as seen in the foreclosure racket, often not even the. And the "homeowner" gets to
pay the taxes and maintain and maybe improve the place, to protect the note holder's equity "Fee
simple absolute" is a comforting myth.
As the article points out, the only potential reduction in money from borrower to lender/loan
servicer (since the PMI underwriters seem to have such close financial ties to the insured note
holder, there's but slim difference between the parts of the racket) might have been that tiny
reduction in the insurance PREMIUM.
Niggling over terms, maybe, but that's what "the law" is made up of.
And apologies if I mistook the referent of "he" to be "Trump" rather than Obama and his clan
- but nonetheless
This excellent analytic walkthrough is a model for what must be done to ward off any form of
"Obama 2!" as a political battle cry. It must be done relentlessly and without any consideration
of being fair to that neoliberal schemer. The Clintonites will claw their way back from the edge
of their political grave if they can draw on such sentiments.
Exactly, what we need is an FDR approach, which Bernie Sanders Democrats are far more likely
to deliver. Instead of bailing out AIG and Goldman Sachs, FDR would have set up a Homeonwers Loan
Corporation to buy up all the adjustable rate mortgages and convert them to fixed-rate mortgages,
and instead of the zero-interest loans going to Wall Street from the Fed, they'd have gone to
homeowners facing foreclosure, who could then stay in their homes and pay them off over time.
But when Obama came in, he brought in Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, who preached about "not
returning to the failed policied of FDR." What a pack of con artists. I prefer your honest hustlers
to those guys (i.e. Team Trump, American Hustle 2.0 at least you know what to expect.)
>See, if the president is unable, either for political or personal reasons, to avoid easy pitfalls
like this
How is this a pitfall? Trump puts a hold on a "last minute Obama change", lets it sit for awhile,
and then reinstates it or maybe even makes it better. Then Trump owns the reduction, not Obama.
This essay focuses on timing and tactics. Not analyzed is the essential question of What
is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?
It's an actuarial question based on prior loss experience. Real estate moves in long cycles.
Each trough is different in depth.
Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of
the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut
to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans.
Obama's action mirrors what's seen in other gov-sponsored insurance programs, such as pension
benefit guarantee schemes which are chronically under-reserved. Cheap premiums look like a free
benefit, until the guarantee fund goes bust in a down cycle, and taxpayers get hit with a bailout.
What's so stupendously silly about Obama's diktat is that it was too late to provide
any electoral benefit. Whereas if HUD's mortgage insurance pool later went bust, it could have
been blamed on Obama for cutting premiums without any actuarial analysis.
Perhaps HUD secretary Ben Carson will ask a more fundamental question: what is HUD doing in
the mortgage insurance business, anyway? Obama's ham-handed tampering with premiums for political
purposes shows why government is not well placed to be in the insurance business - it has skewed
incentives. Ditch it, Ben!
In researching this story (I have no financial background, and have never owned anything beyond
a car), I had a theory that the reduction made no fiscal sense because the Feds raised rates for
the first time in 2016, after hovering above near zero for eight years, to .5%.
My thinking was that
the move was to discourage new borrowers by making loans more expensive, therefore increasing
the cost of mortgages and ultimately threatening the solvency of the FHA. I was wrong, which is
disappointing because it would have made for a more dramatic ending, in that Trump's revoking
the decrease would have been the "correct" thing to do.
Aye. You make an excellent point that essentially everybody in media has ignored.
What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should be high
enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but no higher.
I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and
the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was
the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately
require a taxpayer bailout. Either way , Obama is incompetent.
If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for free!!
But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require continuous
injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress, then you
have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or 4.0% or 6.2%
matters not a whit in this calculation.
Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the concept
of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.
An analogy could be made to municipal bond insurance, which like mortgage insurance is intended
to protect the lender against loss of principal:
Municipal bond insurance adds a layer of protection in the rare case of default. However,
that protection is dependent on the insurance companies' credit quality.
Municipal bond insurance used to be commonplace; now it's quite rare. Why is that? As of
2008, nearly half of all newly issued municipal bonds carried some form of insurance. Today,
the share is less than 7%.
The number of municipal bond insurers has also declined and their credit ratings have fallen.
A number of bond insurers went bust during the Great Recession. Plus, a large default by
Puerto Rico has caused many municipal market participants to question the ability of insurance
companies to pay on the bonds they insure.
Muni bond insurers were publicly traded, profit seeking companies. But they underpriced their
insurance, probably because no one expected a 1930s-style crisis like 2008.
Obama had no more concept about how to price mortgage insurance than I do about how to perform
brain surgery. He was just mindlessly handing out bennies at public expense in the dark of night,
before skulking away into well-deserved obscurity.
I dunno Jim – perhaps Obama DID know (or was advised) that the rate cut was actuarially unsound
thus setting up his successor for problems down the road or bad optics upfront if the cut was
reversed.
Yep. To quote the White House press release, " Today, the President announced a major new
step that his Administration is taking to make mortgages more affordable and accessible for creditworthy
families. "
That's not a valid reason to lower PMI rates. PMI rates must cover losses, and higher
interest rates on mortgages may very well mean higher default rates. If so, PMI rates would need
to go up as well.
Now if the press release had talked about PMI overcharges by the FHA, then I might
have have bought it. But they didn't. There was no mention of actuarial soundness at all
.
For a good explanation of how mortgage insurance works and the impact of the discussed premium
increase/decrease, check out David Dayen's (a frequent contributor to NC) article on the Intercept
here . David goes more in depth on the actual numbers and what they mean.
I did briefly hear some discussion in the news about the FHA mortgage insurance program having
been underfunded in the recent past. This could have given an additional reason for Trump to block
the lower rate until the numbers could be analyzed. I did a search and found a couple of articles
from before either of these decisions that illustrate different perspectives on this issue:
The latter article is from 2009 but includes some interesting details about significant amounts
of money being transferred from the fund to the treasury department.
From the first link, as of 2015: " his recent decision to lower mortgage insurance premiums
despite the FHA falling short of its capital reserve requirement." So the fund was out of compliance
with the law, and this was a long-running point of contention between the administration and the
Republicans in Congress.
What we don't know yet is whether the fund reached its goal, which would justify lowing the
premium. The Congress members were complaining about being lied to.
"What is the appropriate premium for mortgage insurance?"
"Such questions aside, HUD's annual mortgage insurance premium of 0.8% was in the middle of
the typical range of 0.5% to 1.0% charged by private mortgage insurers. Obama's short-lived cut
to 0.55% would have put HUD's premium at the low end, on what probably are higher-risk loans."
The argument here seems to be that what is typical is appropriate. By that argument, 0.55%
which falls in that range would be ok. The argument that it's too low assumes that the range as
it stands is somehow rationally defined, which is another assumption that itself bears scrutiny.
To say that 0.5-1.0% is ok is an assumption, and should be examined in detail right along with
the 0.55 and 0.8 HUD figures before firmer conclusions could be drawn. The results would give
an informed answer to the rhetorical question " what is HUD doing in the mortgage insurance business,
anyway?" Absent that, we're reduced to arguments, tainted on both sides by political inclinations.
Jeff Epstein's clarification is exemplary.
One may be more effective, but if it's not feasible, it doesn't matter how effective it would
be in theory. See this comment by Martin from Canada a few days ago:
Maybe a viable new progressive party can be created. But it sure won't be easy. If it weren't
extremely difficult, don't you think that the Greens would have done it by now? For now, I think
that people need to be actively looking for candidates to run in the 2018 Democratic primaries.
In a few places, at the state level, this will be happening in 2017. See:
Obama came in off the golf course after Trump was elected and issued dozens of similar diktats i
recall wondering at the time that if all those moves were so important, why didn't he make them
in the 8 years he had
EZ real issue for Democrats to embrace. Stop the sales tax of food at the state/muni level.
Shift that burden (or as much as reasonably possible) to the top income brackets.
Oh wait, the places where Democrats can do this, always solidly vote D and there's no incentive.
There is an art to politics. As anyone who studies the subject knows, one has to be both "Lion
& Fox." Lion .for the strength to drive policies, but also a Fox in order to avoid "Snares and
Traps." Bannon, who actually has been writing these executive orders, stepped right into this
Trap. Rookie mistake. This is what happens when you have ideologues attempting to actually govern.
They "step in it." I believe that Jeff is a bit naive and thin skinned here as to "The Game."
Obama did indeed set a snare ..but I am a bit more concerned by Steve's arrogance for boldly stepping
in it and allowing the opposition a fine platform to grandstand on the issue. Rookie mistake.
Arrogance & Stupidity.
Afaics there are two ways in which this game can be played:
A)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates while simultaneously denouncing 0bama for setting the
trap.
3: MSMedia circus.
B)
1: 0bama sets the trap.
2: Trump nullifies the reduction in rates.
3: D-party denounces Trump.
4: MSMedia circus.
5: Trump/Bannon denounces 0bama for setting the trap.
6: MSMedia once again loses credibility, at least in the eyes of Trump supporters.
Why is option A better than B? Am I missing something here?
If everyone with less than 20% equity has PMI, why didn't it pay off after the crash and lessen
the need for a bailout? Logic would dictate most of the foreclosures were on homes people bought
most recently with less than 20% down. Did PMI pay any money during the crash and to whom and
for what?
If it didn't do any good during the last crash to lessen the public bailout, what's the point
of requiring it?
That is a very good question and I don't remember hearing anything about PMI paying out during
the crash (but that could just be my memory). In fact it never even crossed my mind but yeah you'd
think that should have mitigated some of the losses. Maybe any payout would only benefit the mortgage
holder directly and wouldn't carry through to the mortgage-based securities? That seems odd though
and if true would be a strong case for severely curtailing if not eliminating at least the more
exotic bets.
I watched a few times until what's his name, the main turk, interrupted and talked over the
female co-host too many times for my stomach. There are too many good choices to give clicks to
that type of behavior. Hey this is the 21st century.
I don't know . Obama made many policy changes after the election results came.
It's not as if government is a fast moving engine. This could have been in the works for years
and got expedited for obvious reasons. It took years for Obama to start commuting drug sentences,
also Chelsea Manning, and there was no political gain in it for him.
Unless the policy was itself a fraud, it's impossible to know whether it was implemented cynically.
I made this point below, once it escapes moderation, but basically: 1) the article fails to
tell us whether the new rate made sense; and 2) Clinton did the same thing – a bunch of last-minute
progressive moves, designed to stroke his legacy and punk his Republican successor. Let's hope
the clemency actions are less reversible than the policy moves.
The MIP rate reduction was either an ill-advised reaction to the recent spike in mortgage rates
or a simple set-up for the incoming administration. I suspect is was a combination of both, and
likely designed more for political gain than anything.
It's hard to take a guy seriously when he professes to be concerned about home affordability
when he spent the last 8 years "foaming the runway" for banks as millions of people were foreclosed
on their homes, only to watch many of those same homes get gobbled up by Wall Street and rented
back out to them.
Fewer underwater borrowers will at least curtail the path to feudalism in this new echo housing
bubble.
Another issue is who would have actually benefited from the Obama rate cut. We are supposed
to believe it would have been home buyers, but a uniform increase in the spending power of home
buyers as a group is to a large extent offset by a corresponding increase in home prices. To that
extent it would be sellers (including private equity) and not low income buyers who would benefit.
Also, as far as I'm concerned, if Obamamometer was serious about helping homeowners there are
many more better ways to do it than "foaming the runway" for banks, or preempting any meaningful
action through his statewide get out of jail free card settlement, or actually trying to stop
his buddies from blowing asset bubble after asset bubble.
Moreover, if you can´t put up more than 20% up front to buy a house maybe the problem is that
wages are shit compared to property prices and people can´t afford anything more than cheap meth
or oxycontin to cope with their sorry lives.
Pardon if this is a duplication, but: Isn't there a very large omission here? Was the premium
decrease justified, or not? It's supposed to be government insurance, so the premium should cover
the costs. Did it? Would the proposed lower premium cover them? (Yeah, I know, MMT. But apparently
the idea here was to have a self-supporting program, so it should be self-supporting unless you
announce otherwise.)
That said: this is part of a pattern. Obama made a number of progressive policy moves at the
very last minute, most of them reversible. This is nothing but legacy-stroking, as well as setting
a trap for the next Pres. Clinton did the same thing, along with some questionable pardons.
I noticed the false headlines on yahoo news (the bastion of fake and worthless news) and I
immediately checked it to find that O'Liar had planted this landmine so that it could blow up
in Trump's face. Sure enough, when Trump canceled it, he was the bad guy (even though it had never
had gone into effect as this article points out). What a cynical move by O'Liar and how cynical
can his sycophants be?
Great post! I saw the headlines when the story came out and instantly thought there was something
"off", something a little too pat about the stories. But I wasn't sure what was wrong with the
stories, and was left confused. This post of investigative reporting and facts informs me what
was actually happening. Thank you.
The reaction here puzzles me to the point of confusion. Absent any argument that the policy
didn't offer it's claimed benefits (cost savings for the middle-class), is the left so virtuous
that it will reject and refuse to fight for any advance which isn't selflessly arrived at?
Compare this to "conservatives" who successfully campaigned in 2010 against supposed Medicare
cuts related to Obamacare implementation, when they'd love nothing more than to kill the program
outright.
We, by contrast, we won't even fight for what we claim to believe in, if it isn't wrapped in
virtue.
You are missing that this is insurance, and the cost of losses must be paid for somehow. From
Bruce's comment above:
What should the mortgage insurance rate actually be? And the answer is simple: It should
be high enough to cover losses incurred by mortgage defaults (plus operating expenses), but
no higher.
I don't know what that rate should have actually been, but if it was 0.55%, then Obama and
the FHA should have lowered the rate years ago to avoid overcharging people. And if 0.80% was
the right rate, then Obama should never have lowered it at all, given that it would ultimately
require a taxpayer bailout. Either way, Obama is incompetent.
If the only consideration is cost to customers, then the proper rate is 0%. Offer it for
free!! But if you want to the program to actually be self-sustaining, so that it doesn't require
continuous injection of taxpayer dollars and be a perpetual target for cancellation by Congress,
then you have to charge enough to cover losses. Whether the average mortgage rate is 3.5% or
4.0% or 6.2% matters not a whit in this calculation.
Net conclusion: Obama is either a flaming incompetent who flat-out doesn't understand the
concept of insurance, or this was a deliberate attempt to impose a political headache on Trump.
Granted, but nobody knows the facts. Bruce wants to damn Obama for not doing it before, or
damn him now for doing it. But nothing he either did or didn't do will be deemed acceptable at
this point, even if the reduction is fully warranted.
Have we never heard politics? Process? Delay? Your net conclusion may still prove to be the
correct one, though I'm not sure that failure to implement change earlier, assuming it was warranted,
could be justly laid at the feet of Obama. But we do know?
I happen to think the heartlessness of this
Order was a feature, not a bug, in order to garner maximum
attention. I just read Mish's comment section, and Trump's
base is cheering.
But on a longer term scale, heartlessness towards Muslim
immigrants and DREAMers is going to turn persuadables against
Trump. That and the next recession.
We'll differ on this one part, people that voted for Trump
are not persuadables. They have always voted the same way in
every single election they have voted in.
Amazes me that
even now people keep thinking that Trump voters are anything
but loyal GOP voters. And I think the best argument against
this (besides common sense) is the reaction of Rep leaders to
this obviously illegal action.
They're silent.
They cannot afford to speak out against this racist
policy, as their own voters are for this racist policy.
ilsm -> EMichael...
, -1
silent on ethnic racism and the rest of US so much more
guilty ..... on drone assassination and militarist nation
building gone awry, tilting with nuclear war to keep NATO
less recondite, etc, etc.......
Are the libruls all riled
up because the immigrant ban might reduce terror shootings in
US to reduce screaming for techno-murder?
"... most reports on Mexican employment aggregate manufacturing jobs with "industry", which would include oil gas drilling and construction...i did find one graph that shows a 20%, 5 million job jump in Mexican industrial employment in the first six years after NAFTA, but they never reached their prior peak, and i find the rest of the period inconclusive, not knowing much about Mexican business cycles: ..."
The percentage of employees working in manufacturing in the
US fell in a long surprisingly straight line from the late
1960s. The big drop in employee count in 2000 was a result of
the collapse of the dot-com boom. There has been a long,
steady downward pressure on manufacturing jobs, but we see
big drops in their absolute numbers in just about every
recession.
I do know that the 1990s were a big decade for increased
manufacturing efficiency. Supercomputers and
micro-controllers changed the way we designed and built cars,
cans and washing machines, for example. I know Silicon Valley
was rapidly changing the way computers were assembled as
design rules made chip design easier and new techniques made
chip placement and connection simpler. Does anyone even use a
wire wrap gun anymore? There was also the impact of the
Japanese challenge of the 1980s which made manufacturers
rethink their supply chain and encouraging robotics and
continuous inspection.
The official story is that the adoption of computers
didn't show up in productivity figures, but if you looked at
manufacturing, their impact was pervasive. Not every industry
is going to advance at the same time, and improvements that
helped one often lower costs and help others.
If you look at the chart, the big drop in 2000 rivals the
drop in the early 1980s and the similar drop during the most
recent crash. It's like a strong gust of wind knocking down
an old tree trunk. The trunk was rotting and weakening for
years, but it was the wind storm that knocked it down.
Nope. As you say, "the 1990s were a big decade for increased
manufacturing efficiency."
And yet the number of jobs in
manufacturing in the U.S. Actually *increased* slightly. And
the increase was worldwide.
"In November 1999, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
Barshefsky and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji made a trade deal
that led to China's admission into the World Trade
Organization (WTO) on November 10, 2001."
Offshoring intensified, according to the official
statistics of the U.S. Trade Representative. Here's the link,
showing that offshoring doubled by 2001:
http://www.trivisonno.com/offshoring
What happened that caused the decline in employment in the
U.S. To be so much more severe than in any other
industrialized country was China.
most reports on Mexican employment aggregate manufacturing
jobs with "industry", which would include oil gas drilling
and construction...i did find one graph that shows a 20%, 5
million job jump in Mexican industrial employment in the
first six years after NAFTA, but they never reached their
prior peak, and i find the rest of the period inconclusive,
not knowing much about Mexican business cycles:
Increases in productivity (technology is a broad term)
likely explain the bulk of the massive decrease in
manufacturing in both the USA and Japan. Furriners certainly
make good scapegoats, however.
"... Loss of one business is OK, two -- the same. But at some point quantity turns into quality and you get entirely new situation. Point of no return. ..."
"... If too many business close you not only lose the whole sector and but you suffer additional loses from the destruction of vertically integrated suppliers. You might lose the whole chain. ..."
"... And your "more technologically advanced facilities" will close too. I saw such a chain of event in chemical industry. And then you will get polluted ingredients from China and lose your customers to Germany. ..."
"... Looks like you do not understand the complexity of of manufacturing chains and thinking in very simplistic terms. ..."
"... And remember that your "high technological sector" is not immune. IT can be and is outsourced to India. Computers for Dell are now assembled in Taiwan. Gradually the design will move too as the best design is when you are close to production facility and understand complex processes involved in production. ..."
The problem is that you don't have the ability to compare what would have happened without NAFTA.
There is no doubt that the pain is real in those communities that saw their factory shut down
and the product being produced in Mexico instead. But would that factory have been shut down anyway
if NAFTA had not been? We know that a lot of manufacturing related to cars moved from the north
to the south within US - and from solid middle class salaries to $10-14/hour. Efficiencies and
hunts for lower cost would have continued regardless of NAFTA. So even though we know some effects
are real we don't know how much they count in the bigger picture of change.
Good point
Carrier will keep jobs here (for now) Will automate later
Try this scenario:
American businesses under pressure from shareholders and corporate raiders underinvest in their
manufacturing facilities and milk the profits. Meanwhile, new more productive competitors are
built incorporating technological advances many of them in developing countries that have strong
growth.
Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more technologically
advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss of jobs to foreign
competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not trade deals.
"Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more
technologically advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss
of jobs to foreign competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not
trade deals."
That't pure neoliberal baloney. Free market propaganda.
Loss of one business is OK, two -- the same. But at some point quantity turns into quality
and you get entirely new situation. Point of no return.
If too many business close you not only lose the whole sector and but you suffer additional
loses from the destruction of vertically integrated suppliers. You might lose the whole chain.
And your "more technologically advanced facilities" will close too. I saw such a chain
of event in chemical industry. And then you will get polluted ingredients from China and lose
your customers to Germany.
Looks like you do not understand the complexity of of manufacturing chains and thinking
in very simplistic terms.
And remember that your "high technological sector" is not immune. IT can be and is outsourced
to India. Computers for Dell are now assembled in Taiwan. Gradually the design will move too as
the best design is when you are close to production facility and understand complex processes
involved in production.
There was recently a story how Intel lost serious money just trying to move the process from
one place to another.
Another factor that outsourcing of manufacturing radically changes the balance of power between
the capital and the labor. It helped to decimate the power of organized labor, which was the explicit
goal of neoliberalism: atomization of labor force and conversion of them into autonomous "self-enhancing"
(via education and training at your own expense) units, competing with each other in the (pretty
unfair) "labor market".
It's simply amazing how many factors played in hand for neoliberal coup d'état of 1980th: computer
revolution, Internet and related communication revolution, financialization ( 401(k) plans were
enacted into law in 1978), dissolution of the USSR, outsourcing and related decimation on trade
unions power. And then came Clinton and officially buried the New Deal.
"... "[T]he decline in manufacturing employment ... is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving technological progress." At this point I call nonsense. Until somebody shows me the "technological progress" that hit precisely like a tsunami in the year 2000, The argument made by DeLong and Rodrick is nonsense. I already debunked the "but, Germany!" Argument the other day, so don't even try that. ..."
"... The U.S. went from 30% of its nonfarm employees in manufacturing to 12% because of rapid growth in manufacturing productivity and limited demand, yes? The U.S. went from 12% to 9% because of stupid and destructive macro policies--the Reagan deficits, the strong-dollar policy pushed well past its sell-by date, too-tight monetary policy--that diverted it from its proper role as a net exporter of capital and finance to economies that need to be net sinks rather than net sources of the global flow of funds for investment, yes? The U.S. went from 9% to 8.7% because of the extraordinarily rapid rise of China, yes? The U.S. went from 8.7% to 8.6% because of NAFTA, yes? ..."
"... And yet the American political system right now is blaming all, 100%, every piece of that decline from 30% to 8.6% and every problem that can be laid its door on brown people from Mexico. ..."
"... Sanders addressed the issue too and for that he's insulted by the likes of Sanjait and other progressive neoliberals. ..."
What did NAFTA really do? : Brad De Long has written a
lengthy essay that defends NAFTA (and other trade deals) from the charge that they are responsible
for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. I agree with much that he says – in particular
with the points that the decline in manufacturing employment has been a long-term process that
predates NAFTA and the China shock and that it is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving
technological progress. There is no way you can hold NAFTA responsible for employment de-industrialization
in the U.S. or expect that a "better" deal with Mexico will bring those jobs back.
At the same time, the essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the distributional
pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains.
So what does the evidence say on these issues? ...
A recently published academic study by Lorenzo Caliendo and Fernando Parro uses all the bells-and-whistles
of modern trade theory to produce the estimate that these overall gains amount to a "welfare"
gain of 0.08% for the U.S. That is, eight-hundredth of 1 percent! ... Trade volume impacts were
much larger: a doubling of U.S. imports from Mexico.
What is equally interesting is that fully half of the miniscule 0.08% gain for US is not an
efficiency gain, but actually a benefit due to terms-of-trade improvement. That is, Caliendo and
Parro estimate that the world prices of what the U.S. imports fell relative to what it exports.
These are not efficiency gains, but income transfers from other countries (here principally Mexico
and Canada). These gains came at the expense of other countries.
A gain, no matter how small, is still a gain. What about the distributional impacts?
The most detailed empirical analysis of the labor-market effects of NAFTA is contained in a
paper by John McLaren and Shushanik Hakobyan. They find that the aggregate effects were rather
small (in line with other work), but that impacts on directly affected communities were quite
severe. It is worth quoting John McLaren at length, from an
interview : ...
In other words, those high school dropouts who worked in industries protected by tariffs prior
to NAFTA experienced reductions in wage growth by as much as 17 percentage points relative to
wage growth in unaffected industries. I don't think anyone can argue that a 17 percentage drop
is small. As McLaren and Hakobyan emphasize, these losses were then propagated throughout the
localities in which these workers lived.
So here is the overall picture that these academic studies paint for the U.S.: NAFTA produced
large changes in trade volumes, tiny efficiency gains overall, and some very significant impacts
on adversely affected communities.
The consequences of NAFTA for Mexico are another topic which would require a separate post.
Let me just say that the great expectations the country's policy makers had for NAFTA
have not been fulfilled . ...
So is Trump deluded on NAFTA's overall impact on manufacturing jobs? Absolutely, yes.
Was he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes.
Tell me something! Who was the biggest friend NRA ever garnered?
44th President? When weapons industry was under Democratic threat of gun control did you see
lot and lot of folks rushing down to the firearms dealer for a final purchase of their favourite
hardware?
Same thing with the wall-around-USA? Under threat, consumers are now buying up all the running-shoes
in China and considering the purchase of all the tea in China-cups.
Even the wholesalers are filling their warehouse with new products from Pacific avenue in hopes
of avoiding the import duty about to befall us. Is that why all the consumer non-cyclical stocks
have shown such a splendid performance? From the expected profit on warehoused products that avoided
the new tariff If, will same trend boost same equities until the rumour becomes yesterday's news?
"[T]he decline in manufacturing employment ... is driven mainly by the secular trend of labor-saving
technological progress." At this point I call nonsense. Until somebody shows me the "technological
progress" that hit precisely like a tsunami in the year 2000, The argument made by DeLong and
Rodrick is nonsense. I already debunked the "but, Germany!" Argument the other day, so don't even
try that.
Let's try again with this fact: "the decline in manufacturing employment has been a long-term
process that predates NAFTA and the China shock". Did manufacturing employment peak exactly in
2000?
It seems manufacturing peaked during the Carter years. And then came Reagan and his toxic macroeconomic
mix which led to a massive dollar appreciation. What Krugman just wrote.
Good point. Manufacturing employment fell when Reagan came into power and it fell again after
2000. I guess the NAFTA bashers have some weird lag and lead model.
Yep. A new President Bush looking backward from the early '00s probably said, "Man, technology
is wreaking havoc on the working man. If this continues it's going to be real bad."
No, let's try again with THIS fact: manufacturing employment fell 12% during the 1980-82 recesions,
then remained stable until 2000.
Then it fell by over 30% in 10 years.
Please tell me exactly what technology improvement washed over manufacturing employment *precisely*
in the year 2000 to make it fall off a cliff exactly then? Oh and by the way, during that decade
the US$ declined in value on a trade weighted basis.
And while I am at it, Japan, Canada, France and Italy had far smaller % declines than the U.S.
C.mon, tell me what happened in the year 2000 that has made the decline in U.S. manufacturing
employment such a big outlier since then. Surely the free trade apologists here can name the productivity
improvement in the year 2000. What was it?
using the 2000 bubble is some nice cherry picking. if ones chooses the two previous recessions
the trends are very similar. there was also a distinct change in the slope of productivity per
hour starting in the late 80s so i think this is a more appropriate starting point
The U.S. Was not the only country that had a recession in 2001. Why the collapse *only* in the
U.S.?
I will move on when people admit that collapse was not due to an overnight spike in productivity.
We have double the loss of nearly any other industrialised country.
Was there possibly something else that happened in the year 2000?
ironically, i'm probably more opposed to so-called "free trade" deals than NDD. i've been gassed,
shot at, and even voted for perot despite his *repugnant* social conservatism. imo, the decimation
of labor rights and deregulation were major contributors to the ratification of trade agreements
that harmed working class people while benefiting the rich. i also believe the irrational black-white
position of many sanders social democrats on trade only helps trumpists promote america first
nationalism. union-busters, deregulators, and "job-creating" CEOs should not get a get-out-of-jail-free
card!
The percentage of employees working in manufacturing in the US fell in a long surprisingly straight
line from the late 1960s. The big drop in employee count in 2000 was a result of the collapse
of the dot-com boom. There has been a long, steady downward pressure on manufacturing jobs, but
we see big drops in their absolute numbers in just about every recession.
I do know that the 1990s were a big decade for increased manufacturing efficiency. Supercomputers
and micro-controllers changed the way we designed and built cars, cans and washing machines, for
example. I know Silicon Valley was rapidly changing the way computers were assembled as design
rules made chip design easier and new techniques made chip placement and connection simpler. Does
anyone even use a wire wrap gun anymore? There was also the impact of the Japanese challenge of
the 1980s which made manufacturers rethink their supply chain and encouraging robotics and continuous
inspection.
The official story is that the adoption of computers didn't show up in productivity figures,
but if you looked at manufacturing, their impact was pervasive. Not every industry is going to
advance at the same time, and improvements that helped one often lower costs and help others.
If you look at the chart, the big drop in 2000 rivals the drop in the early 1980s and the similar
drop during the most recent crash. It's like a strong gust of wind knocking down an old tree trunk.
The trunk was rotting and weakening for years, but it was the wind storm that knocked it down.
Nope. As you say, "the 1990s were a big decade for increased manufacturing efficiency."
And yet the number of jobs in manufacturing in the U.S. Actually *increased* slightly. And
the increase was worldwide.
"In November 1999, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji
made a trade deal that led to China's admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) on November
10, 2001."
Offshoring intensified, according to the official statistics of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Here's the link, showing that offshoring doubled by 2001:
http://www.trivisonno.com/offshoring
What happened that caused the decline in employment in the U.S. To be so much more severe than
in any other industrialized country was China.
Increases in productivity (technology is a broad term) likely explain the bulk of the massive
decrease in manufacturing in both the USA and Japan. Furriners certainly make good scapegoats,
however.
"So here is the overall picture that these academic studies paint for the U.S.: NAFTA produced
large changes in trade volumes, tiny efficiency gains overall, and some very significant impacts
on adversely affected communities."
Yes the free trade cheerleaders always miss the distributional impacts. But I do remember a
few international economists when NAFTA first passed saying the efficiency gains would be only
modest. I guess they were not heard over the cheerleading.
But one should also note that shot across the bow of Team Trump that Dani took. As always -
one of the best on the issue of globalization.
Technological advances also have uneven distributional pain
Job losses to strong dollar policy have uneven distributional pain
Trump tells the lie that better Trade agreements will fix the distributional pain.
It won't because trade agreements only create a small fraction of that pain.
The elephant in the room is Technological advances. It is unwise and undesirable to fight progress
(as in Luddite)
The question obscured by scapegoating NAFTA is what policies will address dislocation? Clinton
proposed shifting dislocated miners to clean energy jobs. Dislocated miners rejected that idea
in favor of an empty promise to return mining jobs. The conversation will return to square one,
"What policies will address dislocation?" only after Trump trade policy upheaval fails because
it addresses the wrong problem
I'm not a Luddite but we could and should address those distributional consequences that you properly
note. And you are spot on - Trump is creating more dislocations with his stupid bluster.
I agree. The march of technology is responsible for the productivity gains, and those gains led
to the majority of the job losses.
But it is an economic argument that simply will not win elections when we say "only 5% of the
folks lost their jobs in manufacturing due to trade, so our recommended trade policy to you, the
American people, is to keep doing what we have been doing for the last 25 years, because it only
substantially harms a small number of Americans."
To the extent Americans vote based on trade considerations in the first place (which is unclear
to me), to win elections we need to be proposing plans for trade surpluses or balanced trade.
(My preference is to seek balanced trade.).
This is why I have been beating a drum about the Buffett plan
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
trying to get you smart folks here to critique it and try to get some energy behind it, in
my own small (and ineffective way).
It is kind of hard to talk about a 13 year old plan when the updated numbers for today are much
more in favor of US. Today, if we just balanced our trade with China we would no longer have a
trade deficit.
This is a fair point. But it could be that 10 years from now we have some other cause of concern.
I seem to recall in the late 80's the concern was Japan taking over and a huge trade deficit with
Japan. That concern has receded but now the lion's share of the imbalance is with China. Can we
fix it once and for all? Also, what sort of policy proposals should people get behind that are
(A) winners politically/ help win elections, (B) economically sound, and (C) good for US workers
/ reduce inequality?
It would be great if some small group of smart folks like those who comment here could develop
such a policy prescription in the coming months by arguing and discussing amongst ourselves. If
we could do that then we could try to infect some unsuspecting politicians with the ideas, and
who knows, maybe in 4 years it could make a difference for our world.
The trade deficit is actually not that important nor is manufacturing. We are moving towards a
"Star Trek" like future where food and things can be delivered on demand without people having
to do anything. If we continue to want people to acquire those things using money, we have to
find ways to provide people with money. The reason we provide people with money via a job is that
we think there is a societal value to connecting work with getting money (to acquire stuff). I
am not sure how we can get out of that primitive mindset of "deserving" and spend our time on
something more meaningful.
"So is Trump deluded on NAFTA's overall impact on manufacturing jobs? Absolutely, yes. Was
he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced in
certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
I guess Trump is not going to invite Dani to work for his CEA. Which is a loss for the nation.
"[H]igh school dropouts who worked in industries protected by tariffs prior to NAFTA experienced
reductions in wage growth by as much as 17 percentage points relative to wage growth in unaffected
industries."
And those high school drop outs all voted for Trump. So the bottom line is that high school
drop outs rule the nation because the rest of us don't vote as a bloc.
The problem is that you don't have the ability to compare what would have happened without NAFTA.
There is no doubt that the pain is real in those communities that saw their factory shut down
and the product being produced in Mexico instead. But would that factory have been shut down anyway
if NAFTA had not been? We know that a lot of manufacturing related to cars moved from the north
to the south within US - and from solid middle class salaries to $10-14/hour. Efficiencies and
hunts for lower cost would have continued regardless of NAFTA. So even though we know some effects
are real we don't know how much they count in the bigger picture of change.
Good point
Carrier will keep jobs here (for now) Will automate later
Try this scenario:
American businesses under pressure from shareholders and corporate raiders underinvest in their
manufacturing facilities and milk the profits. Meanwhile, new more productive competitors are
built incorporating technological advances many of them in developing countries that have strong
growth.
Recession hits and the least competitive businesses close. Those are primarily the rust belt
dinosaurs. After the recession ends, it is more competitive to increase production at more technologically
advanced facilities than to try to restart the dinosaurs. There is net loss of jobs to foreign
competition but much is due to misguided industrial and tax policy, not trade deals.
While he is generally right, this is rather disingenuous, since offshoring jobs started long before
NAFTA. It began with the maquiladora system in Mexico and by the 1990s had largely shifted to
SE Asia (anybody remember the Asian Tigers?). Even many maquiladoras relocated there. By the late
1990s, when NAFTA was signed, most of those jobs had already gone. As I keep saying, you need
to look at the details and not just the aggregates. Most the labor intensive industries relocated
to low wag/benefit countries with no labor or environmental protections before NAFTA, leaving
only those most amenable to automation. Blaming automation only works if you ignore the first
part.
The maquiladora system did start well before NAFTA. But note China has taken business away from
those maquiladoras. Putting that 20% border tax on Mexico that Trump wants means more business
for Asia.
I remember studying a prototype computer at an MIT lab in the mid-1980s. All of the chips (mainly
7400 series) were marked with Central American country names. One guy joked that he was glad we
had the contras fighting against freedom down there so we didn't have to worry about our supply
of 7404s.
What productivity increase hit like a tsunami in the U.S. and only the U.S. Precisely in the year
2000? Not in 1999 or any other year in the 1990s, but starting precisely in the year 2000.
If you can't name it, the thick skull is not mine.
"Hey look, there Dani Rodrik saying exactly what I've been saying for a while."
LOL no he's not!!!
"At the same time, the essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the distributional
pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
"Was he able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
I don't want to cause more fights, and also I don't want to be the target of ridicule, but...
what is it that Dani Rodrick is saying that agrees with what you've said? I am not disputing you,
just asking for clarification, as he says several things here.
The consequences of NAFTA for Mexico are another topic which would require a separate post. Let
me just say that the great expectations the country's policy makers had for NAFTA have not been
fulfilled....
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in any country in Central America, any country in south America save for unfortunate Venezuela
and slower than in Canada or the United States.
Between 1992 and 2014, total factor productivity for Mexico actually decreased. Mexico fared
more poorly in productivity than in any country for which there are records in Central America,
any country in South America other than Venezuela and more poorly than in Canada or the US.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in any country in Central America, any country in South America save for unfortunate Venezuela
and slower than in Canada or the United States.
Between 1992 and 2014, total factor productivity for Mexico actually decreased. Mexico fared
more poorly in productivity than in any country for which there are records in Central America,
any country in South America other than Venezuela and more poorly than in Canada or the US.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in the Dominican Republic or Trinidad. Jamaica however grew more slowly.
Between 1992 and 2013, the last year for which there are records, real per capita Gross Domestic
Product for Mexico increased slower than in Puerto Rico or Cuba, despite the US embargo of trade
with Cuba.
Between 1992 and 2015, real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Mexico increased slower than
in language related Spain, Portugal, Angola or the Philippines.
Anne - Google processed trade. A big deal in China. And exactly what maquiladoras are. Yes they
do compete. And workers in these sectors are making around $3 an hour regardless of nation.
Google processed trade. A big deal in China. And exactly what maquiladoras are. Yes they do compete.
And workers in these sectors are making around $3 an hour regardless of nation.
Trump wants border taxes aka tariffs. Paul Ryan wants the Destination Based Cash Flow Tax aka
border adjustments. If Trump does not know they are different, his advisers are lying to him.
Of course I am no fan of that border adjustments idea Speaker Ryan is pushing. But that is a much
deeper conversation. Let's just say - Ryan is lying every time the weasel smiles.
Trump wants border taxes aka tariffs. Paul Ryan wants the Destination Based Cash Flow Tax aka
border adjustments....
[ I am only interested in understanding the difference between a tariff and a destination tax
and who pays each. The point is to understand each of the 2 possibilities and who will pay in
each case. Tariffs are paid by consumers. Who will pay a destination tax?
Yes I am sure they understand that this will reduce the value of the peso at least by 20% so in
the end US will end up paying for the wall and then some. It is just that low information voters
and low information Presidents will think we made Mexico pay for it.
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over
the distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
He's a neoliberal like PGL and Sanjait.
They don't care about the distributional pain. They're hacks defending hack centrist politicians.
The distributional pain helped elect Trump and the neoliberals can't admit it.
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over the
distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
Rodrik could have substituted PGL or Krugman for DeLong.
"The distributional pain helped elect Trump and the neoliberals can't admit it."
Distributional pain aka the Stopler Samuelson theorem. I talk about this often. Krugman does
too. But then this requires a little bit of analytical ability which serial idiots like you don't
do. Rage on - troll.
All you and Krugman do is mock Bernie Sanders and his supporters, people who would actually
do something about the distributional pain Rodrik talks about.
Rodrik:
"At the same time, [DeLong's] essay leaves me frustrated and uneasy. It seems to gloss over
the distributional pain of NAFTA and overstate the overall gains."
Just like PGL and Krugman. That's why neoliberal Hillary lost. It's why Trump won. And the
neoliberals still won't admit it.
In short, it's complicated – not all bad, by any means, but not the pure uprising of idealists
the more enthusiastic supporters imagine.
The political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have an illuminating discussion
of Sanders support. The key graf that will probably have Berniebros boiling is this:
Yet commentators who have been ready and willing to attribute Donald Trump's success to anger,
authoritarianism, or racism rather than policy issues have taken little note of the extent to
which Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected
white men.
The point is not to demonize, but, if you like, to de-angelize. Like any political movement
(including the Democratic Party, which is, yes, a coalition of interest groups) Sandersism has
been an assemblage of people with a variety of motives, not all of them pretty. Here's a short
list based on my own encounters:
1.Genuine idealists: For sure, quite a few Sanders supporters dream of a better society, and
for whatever reason – maybe just because they're very young – are ready to dismiss practical arguments
about why all their dreams can't be accomplished in a day.
2.Romantics: This kind of idealism shades over into something that's less about changing society
than about the fun and ego gratification of being part of The Movement. (Those of us who were
students in the 60s and early 70s very much recognize the type.) For a while there – especially
for those who didn't understand delegate math – it felt like a wonderful joy ride, the scrappy
young on the march about to overthrow the villainous old. But there's a thin line between love
and hate: when reality began to set in, all too many romantics reacted by descending into bitterness,
with angry claims that they were being cheated.
3.Purists: A somewhat different strand in the movement, also familiar to those of us of a certain
age, consists of those for whom political activism is less about achieving things and more about
striking a personal pose. They are the pure, the unsullied, who reject the corruptions of this
world and all those even slightly tainted – which means anyone who actually has gotten anything
done. Quite a few Sanders surrogates were Naderites in 2000; the results of that venture don't
bother them, because it was never really about results, only about affirming personal identity.
4.CDS victims: Quite a few Sanders supporters are mainly Clinton-haters, deep in the grip of
Clinton Derangement Syndrome; they know that Hillary is corrupt and evil, because that's what
they hear all the time; they don't realize that the reason it's what they hear all the time is
that right-wing billionaires have spent more than two decades promoting that message. Sanders
has gotten a number of votes from conservative Democrats who are voting against her, not for him,
and for sure there are liberal supporters who have absorbed the same message, even if they don't
watch Fox News.
5.Salon des Refuses: This is a small group in number, but accounts for a lot of the pro-Sanders
commentary, and is of course something I see a lot. What I'm talking about here are policy intellectuals
who have for whatever reason been excluded from the inner circles of the Democratic establishment,
and saw Sanders as their ticket to the big time. They typically hold heterodox views, but those
views don't have much to do with the campaign – sorry, capital theory disputes from half a century
ago aren't relevant to the debate over health reform. What matters is their outsider status, which
gives them an interest in backing an outsider candidate – and makes them reluctant to accept it
when that candidate is no longer helping the progressive cause.
So how will this coalition of the not-always disinterested break once it's over? The genuine
idealists will probably realize that whatever their dreams, Trump would be a nightmare. Purists
and CDSers won't back Clinton, but they were never going to anyway. My guess is that disgruntled
policy intellectuals will, in the end, generally back Clinton.
The question, as I see it, involves the romantics. How many will give in to their bitterness?
A lot may depend on Sanders – and whether he himself is one of those embittered romantics, unable
to move on.
I guess I am a little confused by the way this article is laid out. The article says the overall
picture is Large trade volume change, little gain (insignificant gain) and large wage drop for
poor.
Meaning, trade has increased but it has little efficiency gain on the economy and it mainly
just depressed wages for the poor in the US. So, am I missing something here?
I thought the whole point of free trade was to lower tariffs/quotas/taxes to allow for each
country to specialize based off their advantages/cost...resulting in a lower price in the international
market. This lower price would then result in benefiting everyone that has to buy that product
ie cars. So, even though you lost your job in automobiles to Mexico you would be able to buy a
new car much cheaper because labor cost is extremely cheap in Mexico. The end result would be
short term unemployment rise but given you could find another job the medium/long run unemployment
would be in equilibrium. Thus, everyone in the medium/long run are better off because of free
trade.
Does the term, "tiny efficiency gains" mean that jobs went to mexico because it was cheaper
labor/regulations and in turn the final product came back to the U.S. virtually the same price
as it was before NAFTA? If that is the case it would make sense to scrap NAFTA.
My understanding is that the benefit of NAFTA or any free trade agreement is essentially going
to be lower cost. This is because inefficient companies or rich countries like U.S. have high
living wage causing the final product to cost more and its all protected from international prices
with quotas/tariffs/import taxes. Thats not to neglect the wage drop in the US due to free trade,
but the argument is that cheaper products is far superior than a small amount of job loss/wage
drop.
I thought the whole point of free trade was to lower tariffs/quotas/taxes to allow for each country
to specialize based off their advantages/cost...resulting in a lower price in the international
market. This lower price would then result in benefiting everyone that has to buy that product
ie cars. So, even though you lost your job in automobiles to Mexico you would be able to buy a
new car much cheaper because labor cost is extremely cheap in Mexico. The end result would be
short term unemployment rise but given you could find another job the medium/long run unemployment
would be in equilibrium. Thus, everyone in the medium/long run are better off because of free
trade....
[ I need to understand this better, but I would agree and argue the adjustment process would
have occurred had the high employment years of the Clinton presidency continued to the Bush presidency
but that was not the case. The problem of trade dislocations that were not compensated for is
found during the Bush years. ]
"The idea here is to explain why targeting the economically large and persistent US trade deficit
is a reasonable policy goal.
This view is not widely accepted among economists. Everyone gets the by identity, the trade
deficit is a drag on growth, but numerous arguments push back on the idea that it's a problem.
Dean Baker and I tackle the issue here. The punchline, as suggested above, is not that the
drag impact of the trade deficit never gets offset. It clearly does, at times. But when offsets
are less forthcoming–the Fed's run out of ammo; the fiscal authorities have gone all austere–the
demand-reducing drag from trade imbalances is a problem.
Second, even in flush times, the trade deficit, which is exclusively in manufactured goods,
affects the industrial composition of employment, and it is in this regard that Trump has been
able to so effectively tap its politics. While high-ranking democrats were running around pushing
the next trade deal, he was talking directly to those voters who clearly perceived themselves
far more hurt than helped by globalization."
The U.S. went from 30% of its nonfarm employees in manufacturing to 12% because of rapid
growth in manufacturing productivity and limited demand, yes? The U.S. went from 12% to 9% because
of stupid and destructive macro policies--the Reagan deficits, the strong-dollar policy pushed
well past its sell-by date, too-tight monetary policy--that diverted it from its proper role as
a net exporter of capital and finance to economies that need to be net sinks rather than net sources
of the global flow of funds for investment, yes? The U.S. went from 9% to 8.7% because of the
extraordinarily rapid rise of China, yes? The U.S. went from 8.7% to 8.6% because of NAFTA, yes?
And yet the American political system right now is blaming all, 100%, every piece of that
decline from 30% to 8.6% and every problem that can be laid its door on brown people from Mexico.
By not making it clear that you are talking about 0.1%-points of a 21.4%-point phenomenon,
I think you are enabling that. I don't think this is a good thing to do...
"Was Trump able to capitalize on the very real losses that this and other trade agreements produced
in certain parts of the country in a way that Democrats were unable to? Again, yes."
How did he capitalize? By addressing the issue unlike the progressive neoliberals DeLong and
PGL's candidate Hillary.
Just talking about the Stopler Samuelson theorem every now and then doesn't address the issue.
"... If the American peasants were going to revolt they would have done it already. Fortunately for the rich, the peasants have been mollified by opiates, marijuana, cheap industrial calories, videogames and unlimited trash entertainment, and a fawning endless adoration for the rich and famous. And when that fails theyve got mega churches spouting hopium too. ..."
"... By the way, look around most of the country. It's designed without public squares which are necessary for protest and assembly. Look at the BLM protests, they tried to take the freeways and the whites just got furious that their fat SUVs were impeded. ..."
"... Americans are the most apathetic population on earth ..."
"... Peasants do not start revolutions. It is members of the enlightened elite who clap their hands and trigger the avalanche. Their attempts at gradual reform begin by harnessing, and thereby empowering, the threatened, desperate lower-middle class, which turns and rends their fellows and their superiors (the 90-99% in today's jargon). The breakdown of consensus in the middle orders creates chaos, which in turn empowers those who benefit from instability, especially psychopaths, who cannot last long in places with community or corporate memory, but who flourish in civil disorder. ..."
"... They are right. A french-revolution-style reckoning is coming. We will have to dismantle and redistribute their fortunes. And those that resist will not survive. ..."
"... They should be afraid, and they should know that the later the reckoning, the angrier the mob. The angrier the mob, the likelier accidents happen. ..."
"... They are mostly blind to the need to redistribute, and those that are not are blocked by the system (the neoliberal world order) from acting. ..."
"... I guess they adhere that now-old adage: He who dies with the most toys WINS. ..."
"... This very day, NYT reports that Peter Thiel has (i.e., "bought") New Zealand citizenship. And then hilariously goes on to suggest that this expedient could well be thanks to Thiel's adolescent enthusiasm for "Lord of the Rings", which is where they produced the movie, so "becoming a citizen might be the next best thing to living in Middle-earth itself ." ..."
"... The Masque of the Red Death ..."
"... And therein lies the error: they don't judge themselves by the norms they sold (or failed to sell) to us. ..."
"... I'd count the Zuck's purchase of 700 acres (similar acreage to Central Park) as a bolt-hole. And peter Thiel's in New Zealand. Guess the help will be relegated to the Blueseed floating city ..."
"... The French aristocracy was pretty surprised in 1789 how unprepared they were. I'd tend to put them in the former group. Our oligarchy? Definitely psychopaths. ..."
"... The current hedgies should watch Adam Curtis's 4 part docu "The MayFair Set". It's on utube. Or, if 4 hours is too long, they could watch just part 2, notice James Goldsmith, and then watch part 4 starting at about minute 23. Another prepper. Why all the paranoia and prepping? ..."
"... Lavish follies apparently become tiresome or expensive to maintain or lonely or in some other way unappealing after they're built. So now one can rent a villa at Goldsmith's Mexican hideaway, for a considerable sum of course. ..."
"... IF collapse came, I absolutely WOULD go on a 1%er hunt. Open season. ..."
"... Sarcasm on. Hedge fund managers anticipate They're so good at that. That's why hedge fund yields for pension funds are so much better than other fund yields for pension funds. (8^)) Sarcasm off. ..."
"... I don't understand why these pampered, self-worshipping, self-entitled rich scumbags think that New Zealanders will welcome them with open arms if SHTF. ..."
"... Yes, that's the flaw. New Zealand would be great for their purposes if not for the small problem that it's full of New Zealanders. The society is strongly egalitarian, much more so than the US, and has different core values (less about freedom and more about fairness). ..."
"... Thiel's land purchase in the South Island has been front page news lately, along with the news that he didn't have to comply with foreign investment criteria because he is a NZ citizen (which just raised the question of how and why he received citizenship). ..."
"... "What does that really tell us about our system? It's a very odd thing. You're basically seeing that the people who've been the best at reading the tea leaves-the ones with the most resources, because that's how they made their money-are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane." ..."
"... buying airstrips and farms ..."
"... Prime Minister Bill English has defended a decision to grant citizenship to American tech billionaire Peter Thiel, saying "a little bit of flexibility" is useful when it comes to citizenship laws. ..."
"... English said there needed to be a balance between giving everyone a fair chance of citizenship, and encouraging those who would make a positive difference to New Zealand. ..."
"... "If people come here and invest and get into philanthropy and are supportive of New Zealand, then we're better off for their interest in our country, and as a small country at the end of the world, that's not a bad thing. ..."
"... NZ First leader Winston Peters' suggestion that the Government was selling citizenship was "ridiculous", English said. ..."
If the American peasants were going to revolt they would have done it already. Fortunately
for the rich, the peasants have been mollified by opiates, marijuana, cheap industrial calories,
videogames and unlimited trash entertainment, and a fawning endless adoration for the rich and
famous. And when that fails theyve got mega churches spouting hopium too.
By the way, look around most of the country. It's designed without public squares which
are necessary for protest and assembly. Look at the BLM protests, they tried to take the freeways
and the whites just got furious that their fat SUVs were impeded.
If you want to see the future watch Idiocracy not the French Revolution. Americans are
the most apathetic population on earth .
Maybe they just have different priorities? Maybe they have come from countries where life looks
like "the s hit the f" is the norm, but still manage to make do?
Peasants do not start revolutions. It is members of the enlightened elite who clap their
hands and trigger the avalanche. Their attempts at gradual reform begin by harnessing, and thereby
empowering, the threatened, desperate lower-middle class, which turns and rends their fellows
and their superiors (the 90-99% in today's jargon). The breakdown of consensus in the middle orders
creates chaos, which in turn empowers those who benefit from instability, especially psychopaths,
who cannot last long in places with community or corporate memory, but who flourish in civil disorder.
Is Trump the reformer who triggers the avalanche – our Duc D'Orleans, later Philippe Egalite,
under which name he was guillotined? The looks on the faces of Louis XVI and Hillary Clinton were
probably equally dumbfounded when they found themselves stymied by their respective rivals at
the "Assembly of Notables."
They are right. A french-revolution-style reckoning is coming. We will have to dismantle and
redistribute their fortunes. And those that resist will not survive.
They should be afraid, and they should know that the later the reckoning, the angrier the mob.
The angrier the mob, the likelier accidents happen.
At this point, I do not see another option. They are mostly blind to the need to redistribute,
and those that are not are blocked by the system (the neoliberal world order) from acting.
A truly nutty non-solution from the greediest nastiest bastards on the planet. Just frickin
great. They know what they should do, but they adamantly refuse to do it in order to remain mired
in the greedy proflgate ways.
I guess they adhere that now-old adage: He who dies with the most toys WINS.
I wonder when the elites will make themselves Pyramids? Or are they planning to bury themselves
inside these damn bunkers instead? Using the bunkers as necropoli probably makes more sense than
what they're actually planning to use them for.
This very day, NYT reports that Peter Thiel has (i.e., "bought") New Zealand citizenship. And
then hilariously goes on to suggest that this expedient could well be thanks to Thiel's adolescent
enthusiasm for "Lord of the Rings", which is where they produced the movie, so "becoming a citizen
might be the next best thing to living in Middle-earth itself ."
The good news is, these guys will doubtless revert to cannibalism in short order .
I guess they haven't read The Masque of the Red Death .
The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious"
Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to
escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land.
Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and hematidrosis, and die within
half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at
large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of
their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut.
They don't subscribe to the propertarian patriarchal norms that they sold to the public, except
for appearances, which are often cited as pretexts for ejection from the halls of power. They
owe the public cultural shibboleths no real honor, especially not within their private practices.
They are not obligated to enact the stories they write or take to heart the submission they counsel
to us. They didn't get to group hegemony by competing.
I see the paralogic. They're American. Therefore, adversity and competition is the normal posture
for every interaction. Therefore, everything is a fair contest which they won fair and square
against us. Which suggests that they probably subscribe more perfectly to the same alleged social
"norms" they impose on us. And therein lies the error: they don't judge themselves by the norms
they sold (or failed to sell) to us.
If they were as crippled by someone having fun without them when there is plenty of fun to
be had, there would be no ruling class.
on the other hand they have more time and money to gain actually useful skills than wage slaves
EVER will. A variant of the rich get richer phenomena which seems to be how things usually work
out, rather than the poor getting even as mostly happens only in morality tales. Now get to work
and shut up about it!
I'd count the Zuck's purchase of 700 acres (similar acreage to Central Park) as a bolt-hole.
And peter Thiel's in New Zealand. Guess the help will be relegated to the Blueseed floating city
Jet = high time preference
Amel 64= low time preference, in fact not even so relevant to insist on staying on course to NZ.
http://www.amel.fr/en/amel-64/
W. Somerset Maugham's retelling of the tale (1933) "An Appointment in Samarra" comes to mind:
There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little
while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the
marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled
me.
She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away
from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.
The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks
and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace
and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening
gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?
That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished
to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
Examine the mentality of planning for a "collapse."
The hedge fund managers above all are escaping to rural areas, with clean water and air. They've
planned on how to get by with less for themselves and their families.
The article also spoke of bunkers of under ground apartment complexes, silos, etc that would be
enclaves for communities of wealthy citizens where they would ration, learn how to ration, share,
get by with less.
They all think it will be temporary while the ignorant masses destroy each other without their
surperior leadership. They imagine being able to return and begin the hard work of returning things
to the way they were, with themselves back in elite positions.
Just think. If they could imagine maybe getting by on less and used that sense of community
they expect to magically develop in their bunkers, there wouldn't be amy "collapse" to fear anyway.
If they could imagine their clean water and air natural retreats, with food, are simple things
the rest of the planet would like to enjoy and should be able to enjoy without exploitation, there
wouldn't be any collapse to fear.
So not only will their getaways be big failures, but the imagined return to the world after
the crisis is also naive.
Not only would things not be the same, you'd have to be a special kind of idoit or psycopath
to think anything would still be hunky dory with a return to the status quo..
if you survive the carnage they imagine in some kind of collapse.
"you'd have to be a special kind of idiot or psychopath"
The French aristocracy was pretty surprised in 1789 how unprepared they were. I'd tend
to put them in the former group. Our oligarchy? Definitely psychopaths.
The 0.01 percenters would much rather create doomsday bunkers than fix their own greed and
power lust. I guess they know themselves well.
I could poke so many what if holes into their daydream scenarios. Hours of fun since their
most of their scenarios depend on order and business as usual ultimately being restored. I guess
they learned nothing from what typically happens to refugees regardless of their class and they
assume that the "problem" will be localized instead of global and that their assets will be worth
more with them alive than dead.
It is impossible to convince someone afflicted with the greatest pandemic in human history
- Greed - that they are better off having a smaller % of a growing pie than a larger % of a stagnant
or shrinking pie.
The epicenters for the global pandemic are London, New York, and Washington D.C., though not
necessarily in that order.
Wait, I thought Trump was going to revoke federal funding for "sanctuary cities", as well as
the governor of Texas at the state level. Oh, wrong group?
This elite fear and their related actions have been "out there" for years. Puzzling me is what
has changed to elevate this topic in their Davos 2017 discussions?
The current hedgies should watch Adam Curtis's 4 part docu "The MayFair Set". It's on utube.
Or, if 4 hours is too long, they could watch just part 2, notice James Goldsmith, and then watch
part 4 starting at about minute 23. Another prepper. Why all the paranoia and prepping?
Maybe they should just stop destroying companies and pay taxes. They might sleep better if
they felt they were part of the country instead of pirates living apart. imo.
Lavish follies apparently become tiresome or expensive to maintain or lonely or in some other
way unappealing after they're built. So now one can rent a villa at Goldsmith's Mexican hideaway,
for a considerable sum of course.
They can never actually "go Galt" because they need us. If I remember correctly, Galt was some
sort of industrialist who built and manufactured actual things. What do most of these billionaires
provide us? It's difficult to imagine a hedge fund going very well after the apocalypse. Will
people continue updating their facebook pages when the world collapses? Can I paypal my tribal
wasteland overlord his tribute after our government has collapsed?
I suppose they'll just sitting around looking at all bank statements, bored out of their minds
waiting for the power to come back on.
It isn't just elite anxiety, this has been playing out among the lower classes as well. It's
not just prepper reality shows either; we've had almost 10 years now of zombie apocalypse themed
entertainment and a general revival of the post-apocalypse genre across multiple entertainment
platforms.
We know the empire is collapsing, we just wont acknowledge it out loud.
[Reddit CEO Steve] Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek
out some form of community: "Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat
egotistical view that I'm a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not
a slave, when push comes to shove."
Yeah, your skills running a content aggregate site that's become a haven for the alt-right,
that's going to be the things the masses will be looking for in a leader in a post-apocalyptic
society.
What if the guy fueling the jet pours some sugar into the tank? What if the guy who drives
the fuel truck to the airstrip gets "lost" on the day of the apocalypse? What if your driver on
the way to the airport pulls a gun on you? You better get a jumbo jet to fit everyone on that
could spoil your plan. It'll be like the end of the "Jerk". It is just terrible to have to rely
on people and to need all these badges of affluence. Why can't a rich soul be a rapacious rich
jerk, in peace?
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
These stories really make me hope that the collapse that these people are preparing for is
a flu pandemic. In that case, no one is going anywhere as the first thing that will be done by
states is close the borders to slow down transmission of the virus. Good luck getting to New Zealand
then!
Also, let's not forget the Archdruid's (accurate) contention that the (presumably very well
armed) security staff will be eager to hunt down the elites after society collapses.
Charles Hugh Smith in his book Survival+ however does offer some good advice for elites who
want to survive collapse indefinitely: find a tight-knit community and immediately use all the
money and resources at your disposal to make sure that they're self-sustaining, well-armed and
grateful. Then learn some useful skills like playing musical instruments or blacksmithing and
move on in. Maybe someone should send these poor deluded bunker builders a copy!
"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any
material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.
But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others,
are a solemn, basic, God-given right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing
compared with that of the rich.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"The Age of Uncertainty" 1977
If this is a true quote, it does indeed make the blood come out one's ears that Galbraith could
have said it. It is so wrong that its vast wrongness can only be explained by knowing that the
guy was an economist by training. If he had bothered to learn any history–any history at all,
whatsoever, in any way, of any kind–he would never have been able to spout that inane nugget of
anti-truth.
Let's see: August 4, 1789. Just one notable one, among about 47 bajillion counterexamples to
bonehead Galbraith's alleged quotation.
Why don't they bail on the rest of the world now? They might as well get while the getting
is good, and the rest of the world will benefit from their absence. Seems like a win/win to me.
Ahem. This is part of the reason that some rich folks (*COUGH* Elon Musk *COUGH*) is pushing
so hard for (rich) people to pony up and help pay for a one-way trip to Mars. A bunch of pampered
rich people bailing out on Earth to go to the ULTIMATE gated community on Mars where they can
claim all the land from their feet to the horizon.
A pipe dream, of course. Such an endeavor would be ABSOLUTELY dependent upon continued upkeep
and support from Earth, AND Mars is NOT hospitable, at all Nonetheless, the impulse is there
for all to see: use your accumulated (unearned) wealth to get away from the Earth you have raped
to get where you are, before it's too late! Take all your marbles and just up and leave everyone
else to cook in the sewage and heat you've left behind. But at least your pillaging made it possible
for you and a select few others to get out.
As for fancy bunkers like converted missile silos. Note: as a veteran of the cold war and all
that nuke war shit, I KNOW how those things work (and don't work). Fancy air filters on missile
silos will filter out radiation, biological, and MOST chemical agents, but they will not, they
CANNOT, filter out oxygen displacing chemicals (carbon monoxide, halon, ammonia, etc). Some cluster
of rich douchebags and their immediate families think they can hide out for up to 5 years in a
luxury converted missile silo. Well I will just pull a car up to one of your air intakes, run
a line from my exhaust pipe to your intake, and pump your luxury bunker full of carbon monoxide.
Sleep the sleep of the dead, motherf*ckers.
BTW – many of the dystopian authors of the 40s, 50s, and 60s served in the military in WW II.
It is not an accident that they wrote these types of novels and short stories. They had observed
dystopian societies and their outcomes personally. I think the current 1% think they can control
the future in the same way that many of them thought in the 1780s and 1910-1945.
In Jack Womack's Dryco novels, Dryco (a kind of uber-Walmart-cum-Raytheon that owns everything)
becomes worried about CEO safety and covertly engineers a citizen "rebellion" on Long Island,
necessitating a permanently-stationed US military in Manhattan, to protect the elite. The Dryco
inner circle begins moving operations north, to the Bronx and Westchester County, to stay ahead
of rising sea levels. Those books were written mostly in the late '80s/early '90s but still resonate.
Sarcasm on. Hedge fund managers anticipate They're so good at that. That's why hedge fund yields for pension funds are so much better
than other fund yields for pension funds. (8^)) Sarcasm off.
Perhaps they have been reading too much economic doomer porn?
Just three months ago anybody who even considered voting for Sanders, Green, or Trump was a
selfish fool who just wanted to see the world burn. For the sake of our fellow man – consider
the children! – we were encouraged to fall in line to prevent our society from collapsing into
war and economic ruin. If only we'd have know that some of the wealthiest and most influential
people in the country were literally bracing themselves for the apocalypse with absolutely no
intention of helping a single soul escape or doing a thing to prevent the disaster. I guess if
you're rich enough it's OK not to give a shit about destroying the world.
It's important that as many people as possible read the NYT article to see just how crazy and
how horrifyingly self-serving the 1% really is. The idea that anybody will need bunkers or private
airstrips is stupid as hell and straight out of a zombie movie, but it's a perfect illustration
of how little these people care about the world around them.
Spread the word. This is the time to bail. Donald Trump is President. He is at war with corporate
media moguls. Even Bloomberg published an article on America's carnage. The suicide rate of women
under 75 is increasing. The cover-up of the neoliberal looting is collapsing. The millions of
refugees flooding Europe can't be hidden. Blaming Russia doesn't work. A world war is an extinction
event.
Who will be on the last plane out of East Hampton?
I don't understand why these pampered, self-worshipping, self-entitled rich scumbags think
that New Zealanders will welcome them with open arms if SHTF.
If the US were to go tits up the
way they fear. to such an extent that they actually felt the need to flee, the entire world would
get hit hard too. These same clowns talk about globalization and how the world is, and NEEDS to
be, interconnected. Well, you don't get to have it both ways. The US is a huge economic chunk
of the world. If it bites it, then so will a LOT of other nations, and New Zealand is not some
self-sufficient paradise that would be left untouched.
The LEGITIMATE people, the LEGITIMATE citizens of New Zealand, wouldn't take these leeches
in with open arms, strewing their walking paths with flowers and candy, if they abandon the US
in a collapse THAT THEY WERE LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR. They cannot run away and escape their culpability
and the fruits of their unending greed and selfishness.
Yes, that's the flaw. New Zealand would be great for their purposes if not for the small problem
that it's full of New Zealanders. The society is strongly egalitarian, much more so than the US,
and has different core values (less about freedom and more about fairness). If these people had
what it takes to be New Zealanders they would not need to leave the USA in the first place. Failing
that, they are going to be constantly under siege if they move here, in a figurative sense and
possibly a literal one if they try to engage in the same kind of behaviour that required them
to flee the USA.
Thiel's land purchase in the South Island has been front page news lately, along with the news
that he didn't have to comply with foreign investment criteria because he is a NZ citizen (which
just raised the question of how and why he received citizenship).
deep down they know they are a bunch of grifters who have produced nothing of any real value.
some of them are deluded but many know it has all been one big debt fueled scam, involving predatory
behavior (pirate equity) and risk free gambling (hedge scum managers, you lose and they still
win) further abetted by tax avoidance and other shifty activity.
[ "What does that really tell us about our system? It's a very odd thing. You're basically
seeing that the people who've been the best at reading the tea leaves-the ones with the most resources,
because that's how they made their money-are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord
and jump out of the plane." ]
The "Peak Oil Doomers" know very well why hedge fund jack offs are " buying airstrips and
farms "
"supposedly" (so take w/salt), the entire food supply of the Northeast flows through 4 highways
(I 90/80/76/95--sounds plausible). Ain't too hard to seize those chokepoints and disrupt the entire
Northeast.
Similarly the crossings of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers also are major chokepoints for
our just-in-time way of life.
We've all seen the empty bread shelves when 12″ of snow are forecast. I imagine that would
be nothing in the 1:1,000,000 chance civilization truly goes pear-shaped.
Prime Minister Bill English has defended a decision to grant citizenship to American tech billionaire
Peter Thiel, saying "a little bit of flexibility" is useful when it comes to citizenship laws.
(he didn't meet the criteria for citizenship under the law)
English said there needed to be a balance between giving everyone a fair chance of citizenship,
and encouraging those who would make a positive difference to New Zealand.
"If people come here and invest and get into philanthropy and are supportive of New Zealand,
then we're better off for their interest in our country, and as a small country at the end of
the world, that's not a bad thing.
(but he has money and spread a lot of it around and we like that)
NZ First leader Winston Peters' suggestion that the Government was selling citizenship
was "ridiculous", English said.
(even though everything I just said appears to confirm it)
"... Krugman dislikes Trump (as do I). He seems motivated to find fault with Trump's policies. In
fuzzy things like economics and their intersection with politics it is challenging, and perhaps actually
impossible, for most of us to remain balanced. If someone as smart and knowledgeable as Paul Krugman
subconsciously decides to dislike a policy, his brain is more than clever enough to invent reasonable
economic arguments against the policy. ..."
"... Cognitive bias. Using % of jobs that are manufacturing is relative to what was happening in
other job areas: like Reagan building up the military and civil service to buy weapons a tiny part of
the growth in that sector was manufacturing. ..."
"... I understand the textbook story is the Fed raises rates when the budget deficit increases.
I am not sure if the empirical data supports that though. Perhaps the Fed cares more about inflation
than budget deficits and perhaps budget deficits do not directly result in inflation? But if that is
correct, what is the basis for Professor Krugman's assertion that Trump's budget will push up interest
rates? ..."
"... It's like how Greenspan and Rubin told Clinton he had to drop his middle class spending bill
in order to focus on deficit reduction. Greenspan was threatening to raise rates and Clinton bent the
knee to the "independent" Fed. ..."
"... Krugman should remember that "Integrity, once sold, is difficult to repurchase - even at 10x
the original sales price." ..."
Reagan, Trump, and Manufacturing : It's hard to focus on ordinary economic analysis amidst this
political apocalypse. But ... like it or not the progress of
CASE NIGHTMARE
ORANGE may depend on how the economy does. So, what is actually likely to happen to trade and
manufacturing over the next few years?
As it happens, we have what looks like an unusually good model in the Reagan years... - it's not
part of the Reagan legend, but the import quota on Japanese automobiles was one of the biggest protectionist
moves of the postwar era.
I'm a bit uncertain about the actual fiscal stance of Trumponomics: deficits will surely blow
up, but I won't believe in the infrastructure push until I see it, and given savage cuts in aid to
the poor it's not entirely clear that there will be
net stimulus . But suppose there is. Then what?
Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up interest
rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.) This led to an accelerated decline in the industrial
orientation of the U.S. economy:
And people did notice. ...
Again, this happened despite substantial protectionism.
So Trump_vs_deep_state will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite
the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there.
On the other hand, by then the BLS may be thoroughly politicized, commanded to report good news
whatever happens.
Forced Japan to accept restraints on auto exports. The agreement set total Japanese auto exports
at 1.68 million
vehicles in 1981-82, 8 percent below 1980 exports. Two years later the level was permitted to
rise to 1.85 million.(33)
Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution found that the import limits have actually cost
jobs in the U.S. auto
industry by making it possible for the sheltered American automakers to raise prices and limit
production. In 1984,
Winston writes in Blind Intersection? Policy and the Automobile Industry, 32,000 jobs were lost,
U.S. production fell
by 300,000 units, and profits for U.S. firms increased $8.9 billion. The quotas have also made
the Japanese firms
potentially more formidable rivals because they have begun building assembly plants in the United
States.(34) They
also shifted production to larger cars, introducing to American firms competition they did not
have before the quotas
were created. In 1984, it was estimated that higher prices for domestic and imported cars cost
consumers $2.2 billion a
year.(35) At the height of the dollar's exchange rate with the yen in 1984-85, the quotas were
costing American
consumers the equivalent of $11 billion a year
The Reagan Record on Trade: Rhetoric vs. Reality
By Sheldon L. Richman
Executive Summary
When President Reagan imposed a 100 percent tariff on selected Japanese electronics in 1987,
he and the press gave the impression that this was an act of desperation. Pictured was a long-forbearing
president whose patience was exhausted by the recalcitrant and conniving Japanese. After trying
for years to elicit some fairness out of them, went the story, the usually good-natured president
had finally had enough.
When newspapers and television networks announced the tariffs, the media reminded the public
that such restraints were imposed by a staunch free trader. The less-than-subtle message was that
if "Free Trader" Ronald Reagan thought the tariff necessary, then Japan surely deserved it. After
more than seven years in office, Ronald Reagan is still widely regarded as a devoted free trader.
A typical reference is that of Mark Shields, a Washington Post columnist, to Reagan's "blind devotion
to the doctrine of free trade."
If President Reagan has a devotion to free trade, it surely must be blind, because he has been
off the mark most of the time. Only short memories and a refusal to believe one's own eyes would
account for the view that President Reagan is a free trader. Calling oneself a free trader is
not the same thing as being a free trader. Nor does a free-trade position mean that the president,
but not Congress, should have the power to impose trade sanctions. Instead, a president deserves
the title of free trader only if his efforts demonstrate an attempt to remove trade barriers at
home and prevent the imposition of new ones.
By this standard, the Reagan administration has failed to promote free trade. Ronald Reagan
by his actions has become the most protectionist president since Herbert Hoover, the heavyweight
champion of protectionists.
[ I appreciate this reference, which is in turn extensively referenced. ]
This is simple. It means instead of shipping low end Toyota Corolla's that were small, manual
transmission, no A/C, etc., the Japanese started to make larger, more expensive cars, even luxury
cars like Lexis, etc.
If this helps, think of Volkswagen being limited to shipping 1,000 cars to the US. They would
probably send us only the top-end Porsches (VW owns that brand) and none of the more middle class
cars.
To Anne's point on whether this is an accurate portrayal of what happened: I have no recollection
and no knowledge about this.
What really happened is simple. The Japanese car companies got that quota rents (Menzie Chinn
documented this recently) from what was effectively a quota on the imports of Japanese cars. American
consumers instead imported European cars. Any benefits to US car manufacturing was trivial and
totally undo for the aggregate US economy by the massive dollar appreciation. All one has to do
is to look at the exchange rate back then and one gets why net exports fell dramatically.
Japanese manufacturers exported more expensive models in the 1980s due to voluntary export
restraints, negotiated by the Japanese government and U.S. trade representatives, that restricted
mainstream car sales. ...
Acura holds the distinction of being the first Japanese automotive luxury brand. ... In its
first few years of existence, Acura was among the best-selling luxury marques in the US. ...
In the late 1980s, the success of the company's first flagship vehicle, the Legend, inspired
fellow Japanese automakers Toyota and Nissan to launch their own luxury brands, Lexus and Infiniti,
respectively. ...
I am reluctant to disagree with Paul Krugman, as he has forgotten more economics than I'll ever
know. But my first thought as I read this was: motivated reasoning. It is quite interesting, and
affects all of us, and the brilliant folks seem to be more susceptible to it than the average
folks.
Krugman dislikes Trump (as do I). He seems motivated to find fault with Trump's policies.
In fuzzy things like economics and their intersection with politics it is challenging, and perhaps
actually impossible, for most of us to remain balanced. If someone as smart and knowledgeable
as Paul Krugman subconsciously decides to dislike a policy, his brain is more than clever enough
to invent reasonable economic arguments against the policy.
Of course, none of this implies that Krugman is actually wrong in this case.
One question for folks. Krugman says "the budget deficit pushed up interest rates, which caused
a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured goods (which are
still most of what's tradable.)" I am wondering why a budget deficit has to push up interest rates?
In 2009 we ran a large budget deficit at low interest rates. In WW 2 we did as well (I think,
not really sure about this). Is it well established that budget deficits push up interest rates?
Cognitive bias. Using % of jobs that are manufacturing is relative to what was happening in
other job areas: like Reagan building up the military and civil service to buy weapons a tiny
part of the growth in that sector was manufacturing.
What else was going on in late 70's early 80's... a lot of growth on service sector.
It is called cherry picking the chart to make a point with non thinkers.
Right, I think the answer is that budget deficits only push up interest rates if the Fed allows
that to happen. The Fed could keep rates low if they wanted by signaling a willingness to buy
up as much federal debt as is needed to hit some low target rate. So I think Krugman is, in effect,
predicting that they will not do that, and that they will instead counteract the fiscal expansion
with tighter monetary policy on the theory that this is needed to counteract potential "overheating".
I bought a house in 1985, I bet interest rates would go down by taking a 1 year ARM. I did quite
well each year it adjusted! I sold it in 1990 and rates were low enough to go fixed conventional
on the "trade up".
It is reputed the high rates helped cause the "Volcker" recession in the gray around 82.
Thinking about it some more. If I understand this correctly, the thought is that deficit spending
is stimulative, and the economy is already at full employment, so the Fed will raise interest
rates to prevent the economy from "overheating." The increase in rates slows the economy down
by two mechanisms:
(1) when the cost of capital is higher, fewer investments get made than when it is lower (say,
a business needs to see a higher ROI when interest rates are high than when they are low). (As
an aside, outside of the housing market, I don't think this effect is very strong. Real businesses
don't change their approach to investment if rates change by, say, 100%; from 2% to 4%. At least,
not the ones I have been exposed to, which are generally looking for ~ 15% IRR on investments.)
(2) People globally may be more inclined to hold dollars when the risk-free rate is higher,
which increases demand for the currency, which means the currency gets stronger, and exports are
less competitive and imports more competitive, counter-acting the stimulus.
The thing I don't like about this line of thought is that it is fatalist. It suggests that
fiscal policy really does not matter, it will all be offset by monetary policy. There is no real
impact to the economy whether we run huge budget deficits or surpluses. Me not liking it does
not mean it is wrong, obviously, but I just don't buy it. When I run into things like this in
economics I really start to wonder how much of macro is based on empirical observations and correlations
versus 'models.'
I think I ought to take an intro econ course and actually learn something. Or read an introductory
macro text book...
Krugman says "the budget deficit pushed up interest rates, which caused a strong dollar, which
caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured goods (which are still most of what's tradable.)"
I am wondering why a budget deficit has to push up interest rates?
In 2009 we ran a large budget deficit at low interest rates.... Is it well established that
budget deficits push up interest rates?
[ Here then is the relevant matter to be analyzed. ]
Anne, thank you. From this plot I see that during Clinton's presidency we went from a budget deficit
to a surplus. And interest rates dropped. During the George W. Bush presidency we went from a
surplus to a deficit. And interest rates dropped.
There does not appear to be any obvious correlation between the budget deficit and interest
rates.
I understand the textbook story is the Fed raises rates when the budget deficit increases.
I am not sure if the empirical data supports that though. Perhaps the Fed cares more about inflation
than budget deficits and perhaps budget deficits do not directly result in inflation? But if that
is correct, what is the basis for Professor Krugman's assertion that Trump's budget will push
up interest rates?
With war looming, it's time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage.
It means higher monthly payments, but I'm terrified about what will happen to interest rates once
financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits.
From a fiscal point of view the impending war is a lose-lose proposition. If it goes badly,
the resulting mess will be a disaster for the budget. If it goes well, administration officials
have made it clear that they will use any bump in the polls to ram through more big tax cuts,
which will also be a disaster for the budget. Either way, the tide of red ink will keep on rising.
Last week the Congressional Budget Office marked down its estimates yet again. Just two years
ago, you may remember, the C.B.O. was projecting a 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. Now it projects
a 10-year deficit of $1.8 trillion.
And that's way too optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office operates under ground rules
that force it to wear rose-colored lenses. If you take into account - as the C.B.O. cannot - the
effects of likely changes in the alternative minimum tax, include realistic estimates of future
spending and allow for the cost of war and reconstruction, it's clear that the 10-year deficit
will be at least $3 trillion.
So what? Two years ago the administration promised to run large surpluses. A year ago it said
the deficit was only temporary. Now it says deficits don't matter. But we're looking at a fiscal
crisis that will drive interest rates sky-high.
A leading economist recently summed up one reason why: "When the government reduces saving
by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises." Yes, that's from a textbook by the chief
administration economist, Gregory Mankiw.
But what's really scary - what makes a fixed-rate mortgage seem like such a good idea - is
the looming threat to the federal government's solvency.... ]
Yes, thank you for that column from 2003. Yes, Prof. K was correct about the future trend in deficits
back then, but incorrect about the future trend in interest rates.
It is certainly conceivable that he is wrong now as well.
Krugman captures very well what happened in the 1980's. He went to work for the CEA hoping to
undo this disaster. Of course the political hacks in the Reagan White House did not listen to
the CEA. Now he watches people in the Trump White House that are even more insane than these political
hacks. You draw whatever conclusion you want but his concerns strike me as real from someone who
has been there.
pgl - thank you. I am not drawing any hard and fast conclusions, just trying to learn. I appreciate
your comment that is based on both education and experience.
I am still thinking about this Buffett proposal on trade with import certificates.
http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/warren-buffett-foreign-trade/
Jared Bernstein mentioned it in passing in an opinion piece in the NY Times yesterday. I put
a comment on his website asking him to share more of his thoughts on it, and he said that he will
if/when he has time. I hope he does.
No. Budget deficits for a country such as the US do not push up interest rates. They would in
fact lower the interbank rate if not countered by Federal Reserve actions.
If budget deficits added to aggregate demand to the point that the Fed thought its inflation
target was in jeopardy, the Fed might raise its target rate of interest in the hopes of quelling
demand.
The Fed has almost complete control over the interest rate paid by the Federal government when
it decides to issue new debt. WWII is a great example of this. So is our most recent depression.
Will Fiscal Policy Really Be Expansionary?
By Paul Krugman
It's now generally accepted that Trump_vs_deep_state will finally involve the kind of fiscal stimulus
progressive economists have been pleading for ever since the financial crisis. After all, Republicans
are deeply worried about budget deficits when a Democrat is in the White House, but suddenly become
fiscal doves when in control. And there really is no question that the deficit will go up.
But will this actually amount to fiscal stimulus? Right now it looks as if Republicans are
going to ram through their whole agenda, including an end to Obamacare, privatizing Medicare and
block-granting Medicaid, sharp cuts to food stamps, and so on. These are spending cuts, which
will reduce the disposable income of lower- and middle-class Americans even as tax cuts raise
the income of the wealthy. Given the sharp distributional changes, looking just at the budget
deficit may be a poor guide to the macroeconomic impact.
Given the extent to which things are in flux, I can't put numbers on what's likely to happen.
But I was able to find matching analyses by the good folks at Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
of tax * and spending ** cuts in Paul Ryan's 2014 budget, which may be a useful model of things
to come.
If you leave out the magic asterisks - closing of unspecified tax loopholes - that budget was
a deficit-hiker: $5.7 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years, versus $5 trillion in spending cuts.
The spending cuts involved cuts in discretionary spending plus huge cuts in programs that serve
the poor and middle class; the tax cuts were, of course, very targeted on high incomes.
The pluses and minuses here would have quite different effects on demand. Cutting taxes on
high incomes probably has a low multiplier: the wealthy are unlikely to be cash-constrained, and
will save a large part of their windfall. Cutting discretionary spending has a large multiplier,
because it directly cuts government purchases of goods and services; cutting programs for the
poor probably has a pretty high multiplier too, because it reduces the income of many people who
are living more or less hand to mouth.
Taking all this into account, that old Ryan plan would almost surely have been contractionary,
not expansionary.
Will Trumponomics be any different? It would matter if there really were a large infrastructure
push, but that's becoming ever less plausible. There will be big tax cuts at the top, but as I
said, the push to dismantle the safety net definitely seems to be on. Put it all together, and
it's extremely doubtful whether we're talking about net fiscal stimulus.
Now, you might think that someone will explain this to Trump, and that he'll demand a more
Keynesian plan. But I have two words for you: Larry Kudlow.
In looking at economic trends, the other issue to take into account is private lending. Individual
debt (credit cards, etc.) is already back up to the levels before the financial crisis and Trump's
appointees are determined to deregulate financial institutions, which may contribute to a return
to the predatory lending that created the last set of booms and busts. *
It's hard to focus on ordinary economic analysis amidst this political apocalypse. But getting
and spending will still consume most of peoples' energy and time; furthermore, like it or not
the progress of CASE NIGHTMARE ORANGE may depend on how the economy does. So, what is actually
likely to happen to trade and manufacturing over the next few years?
As it happens, we have what looks like an unusually good model in the Reagan years - minus
the severe recession and conveniently timed recovery, which somewhat overshadowed the trade story.
Leave aside the Volcker recession and recovery, and what you had was a large move toward budget
deficits via tax cuts and military buildup, coupled with quite a lot of protectionism - it's not
part of the Reagan legend, but the import quota on Japanese automobiles was one of the biggest
protectionist moves of the postwar era.
I'm a bit uncertain about the actual fiscal stance of Trumponomics: deficits will surely blow
up, but I won't believe in the infrastructure push until I see it, and given savage cuts in aid
to the poor it's not entirely clear that there will be net stimulus. * But suppose there is. Then
what?
Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up interest
rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.) This led to an accelerated decline in the industrial
orientation of the U.S. economy:
[Graph]
And people did notice. Using Google Ngram, we can watch the spread of terms for industrial
decline, e.g. here:
[Graph]
And here:
[Graph]
Again, this happened despite substantial protectionism.
So Trump_vs_deep_state will probably follow a similar course; it will actually shrink manufacturing despite
the big noise made about saving a few hundred jobs here and there.
On the other hand, by then the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be thoroughly politicized, commanded
to report good news whatever happens.
RMO declines sharply during recessions and the worse the downturn, the harder manufacturing
gets hit. Ergo, avoiding recessions is the absolute best policy for manufacturing. Trade and the
dollar's value don't have nearly as strong correlations.
RMWW rise strongly during sustained expansions of private industry employment.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV
Trade deficits have little correlation but the correlation with private industry employment growth
is strong: 16 million new jobs since 1Q2010.
All of this should be obvious, as Keynes said: "The ideas (about economics) . . . are extremely
simple and should be obvious."
"Well, what happened in the Reagan years was "twin deficits": the budget deficit pushed up
interest rates, which caused a strong dollar, which caused a bigger trade deficit, mainly in manufactured
goods (which are still most of what's tradable.)"
Deficit spending would always stimulate an economy except the Fed controls the brakes.
The Fed is especially worried about wage price inflation spirals
When inflation pops its head above target, the Fed slams on the brakes.
At the ZLB, inflation is far below target so the Fed has its foot off the brakes.
Deficit spending is stimulatory because the Fed does not apply the brakes by raising interest
rates.
This is textbook economics
The first intelligent comment here. Yes Volcker kept real interest rate very high for a while
which led to a dramatic appreciation of the dollar. But even as Volcker took off the monetary
brakes to let the economy get back to full employment, real interest rates stayed elevated and
the real appreciation was not entirely reversed. So we got a sustained trade deficit even in the
face of trade protection. That is the simple point that some here wish to duck.
Yes but historically it does not seem like it has worked that way. There does not appear to be
an obvious correlation between budget deficits and either (a) interest rates themselves, or (b)
the change in interest rates.
It seems like the Fed is acting on inflation signals. It is not so clear that (changes in)
budget deficits necessarily result in (changes in) inflation. Unless there is a direct link between
budget deficits and inflation it is hard to credibly argue that increasing the budget deficit
results in increased inflation results in Federal Reserve raising rates to choke off inflation.
The history of budget deficits and interest rates that Anne showed above don't provide much
support for Prof. Krugman's point.
Krugman is predicting that the Fed will raise rates to counter Trump's fiscal expansion and will
appreciate the dollar. That's what happened with Volcker jacking rates to fight inflation.
He doesn't spell this out exactly.
It's like how Greenspan and Rubin told Clinton he had to drop his middle class spending
bill in order to focus on deficit reduction. Greenspan was threatening to raise rates and Clinton
bent the knee to the "independent" Fed.
That's when Clinton threw a tantrum about being an "Eisenhower Republican."
The Senate Democrats like Schumer get what the populist backlash is about. That's why they're
promising $1 trillion over 10 years in government spending rather than Hillary's $275 over 5 years.
They can do the math. They know what happened in the election. It wasn't just about Comey or
the DNC hack. The election shouldn't have been that close.
"the budget deficit pushed up interest rates" We had large budget deficits during the Great Recession
and they didn't push up interest rates. In fact Obama focused too much on deficit reduction.
"... Do you see the name of an actual business, owned by Trump? ..."
"... For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful. ..."
"... Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued. ..."
In any case, a link to the following story in Hamburg's ridiculously sober-sided Die Zeit came
over the transom:
So schockiert von Trump wie alle anderen ("So shocked by Trump like everyone else"). The reporter
is Alexej Kowaljow
, a Russian journalist based in Moscow. Before anyone goes "ZOMG! The dude is Russian
!", everything Kowaljow writes is based on open sources or common-sense information presumably
available to citizens of any nation. The bottom line for me is that if the world is coming to believe
that Americans are idiots, it's not necessarily because Americans elected Trump as President.
I'm going to lay out two claims and two questions from Kowaljow's piece. In each case, I'll quote
the conventional, Steele and intelligence community-derived wisdom in our famously free press, and
then I'll quote Kowaljow. I think Kowaljow wins each time. Easily. I don't think Google Translate
handles irony well, but I sense that Kowaljow is deploying it freely.
(1) Trump's Supposed Business Dealings in Russia Are Commercial Puffery
Here's
the
section on Russia in Time's article on Trump's business dealings; it's representative. I'm going
to quote it all so you can savor it. Read it carefully.
Donald Trump's Many, Many Business Dealings in 1 Map
Russia
"For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia," Trump
tweeted
in July, one day before he called on the country to "find" a batch of emails deleted from
Hillary Clinton's private server. Nonetheless, Russia's extraordinary meddling in the 2016 U.S.
election-a declassified report released by U.S. intelligence agencies in January disclosed that
intercepted conversations captured senior Russian officials celebrating Trump's win-as well as
Trump's complimentary remarks about Russian President have stirred widespread questions about
the President-elect's pursuit of closer ties with Moscow. Several members of Trump's inner circle
have business links to Russia, including former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who
consulted for pro-Russia politicians in the Ukraine. Former foreign policy adviser Carter
Page worked in Russia and
maintains ties there.
During the presidential transition, former Georgia Congressman and Trump campaign surrogate
Jack Kingston
told a gathering of businessmen in Moscow that the President-elect could lift U.S. sanctions.
According to his own son, Trump has long relied on Russian customers as a source of income. "Russians
make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump Jr.
told a Manhattan real estate conference in 2008 , according to an account posted on the website
of trade publication eTurboNews. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
Back to map .
Read that again, if you can stand it. Do you see the name of an actual business, owned by Trump?
Do you see the name of any businessperson who closed a deal with Trump? Do you, in fact, see any
reporting at all? At most, you see commercial puffery by Trump the Younger: "Russians [in Russia?]
make up a pretty [qualifier] disproportionate [whatever that means] cross-section [whatever that
means] of a lot of [qualifier] our assets."
Now Kowaljow (via Google Translate, so forgive any solecisms):
For Donald Trump, all attempts to gain a foothold in the USSR and then in Russia in 30 years
of travel and negotiations failed. Moscow did not have a Trump Tower of its own, although Trump
boasted every time that he had met the most important people and was just about to invest hundreds
of millions in a project that would undoubtedly be successful.
Trumps' largest business success in Russia was the presentation of a Trump Vodka at the Millionaire
Fair 2007 in Moscow. This project was also a cleansing; In 2009 the sale of Trump Vodka was discontinued.
Because think about it: Trump puts his name on stuff . Towers in Manhattan, hotels, casinos,
golf courses, steaks. Anything in Russia with Trump's name on it? Besides the failed vodka venture?
No? Case closed, then.
(2) Zhirinovsky Is The Very Last Person Putin Would Use For A Proxy
Five reasons intel community believes Russia interfered in election
The attacks dovetailed with other Russian disinformation campaigns
The report covers more than just the hacking effort. It also contains a detailed list account
of information warfare against the United States from Russia through other means.
Political party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who the report lists as a "pro-Kremlin proxy,"
said before the election that, if Trump won, Russia would 'drink champagne' to celebrate their
new ability to advance in Syria and Ukraine.
Now Kowaljow:
The report of the American intelligence services on the Russian interference in the US elections,
published at the beginning of January, was notoriously neglected by Russians, because the name
of Vladimir Zhirinovsky was mentioned among the "propaganda activities of Russia", which had announced
that in the event of an election victory of Trump champagne to want to drink.
Such a delicate plan – to reach the election of a President of the US by means of Zhirinovsky
– ensures a skeptical smile for every Russian at best. He is already seventy and has been at
the head of a party with a misleading name for nearly thirty years. The Liberal Democratic Party
is neither liberal nor democratic. If their policies are somehow characterized, then as right-wing
populism. Zhirinovsky is known for shrill statements; He threatened, for example, to destroy the
US by means of "gravitational weapons".
If, therefore, the Kremlin had indeed had the treacherous plan of helping Trump to power, it
would scarcely have been made known about Zhirinovsky.
The American equivalent would be . Give me a moment to think of an American politician who's both
so delusional and such a laughingstock that no American President could possibly
consider using them as a proxy in a devilishly complex informational warfare campaign Sara
Palin? Anthony Weiner? Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Na ga happen.
And now to the two questions.
(3) Why Would Russian Intelligence Agencies Sources Have Talked to Steele?
Kowaljow:
But the report, published on the BuzzFeed Internet portal, is full of inconsistencies and contradictions.
The problem is not even that there are a lot of false facts. Even the assumption that agents of
the Russian secret services are discussing the details with a former secretary of a hostile secret
service in the midst of a highly secret operation by which a future President of the US is to
be discredited appears strange.
Exactly. For the intelligence community and Democrat reliance on Steele's dossier to be plausible,
you have to assume 10-foot tall Russkis (1) with incredibly sophisticated strategic, operational,
and technical capabilities, who have (2) performed the greatest intelligence feat of the 21st
and 20th centuries, suborning the President of the United States, and whose intelligence agencies
are (3) leakly like a sieve. Does that make sense? (Of course, the devilish Russkis could have fed
Steele bad data, knowing he'd then feed it to the American intelligence agencies, who would lap it
up, but that's another narrative.)
(4) How Do You Compromise the Uncompromisable?
Funny how suddenly the word kompromat was everywhere, wasn't it? So sophisticated. Everybody
loves to learn a new word! Regarding the "Golden Showers" - more sophistication! - Kowaljow writes:
But even if such a compromise should exist, what sense should it have, since the most piquant
details have long been publicly discussed in public, and had no effect on the votes of the elected
president? Like all the other scandals trumps, which passed through the election campaign, they
also remained unresolved, including those who were concerned about sex.
This also includes what is known as a compromise, compromising material, that is, video shots
of the unsightly nature, which can destroy both the political career and the life of a person.
The word Kompromat shines today – as in the past Perestroika – in all headlines; It was not invented
in Russia, of course. But in Russia in the Yeltsin era, when the great clans in the power gave
bitter fights and intensively used the media, works of this kind have ended more than just a brilliant
career. General Prosecutor Jurij Skuratov was dismissed after a video had been shown in the country-wide
television channels: There, a person "who looks like the prosecutor's office" had sex with two
prostitutes.
Donald Trump went on Howard Stern for, like, decades. The stuff that's right out there for whoever
wants to roll those tapes is just as "compromising" as anything in the dodgy dossier, or the "grab
her by the pussy" tape, for that matter. As Kowaljow points out, none of it was mortally wounding
to Trump; after all, if you're a volatility voter who wants to kick over the table in a rigged game,
you don't care about the niceties.
Conclusion
It would be nice, wouldn't it, if our famously free press was actually covering the Trump
transition , instead of acting like their newsrooms are mountain redoubts for an irrendentist
Clinton campaign. It would be nice, for example, to know:
1) The content and impact of Trump's Executive Orders.
2) Ditto, regulations.
3) Personnel decisions below the Cabinet level. Who are the Flexians?
4) Obama policies that will remain in place, because both party establishments support them. Charters,
for example.
5) Republican inroads in Silicon Valley.
6) The future of the IRS, since Republicans have an axe to grind with it.
7) Mismatch between State expectations for infrastructure and Trump's implementation
And that's before we get to ObamaCare, financial regulation, gutting or owning the CIA (which
Trump needs to do, and fast), trade policy, NATO, China, and a myriad of other stories, all rich
with human interest, powerful narratives, and plenty of potential for scandal. Any one of them worthy
of A1 coverage, just like the Inaugural crowd size dogpile that's been going on for days.
Instead, the press seems to be reproducing the last gasps of the Clinton campaign, which were
all about the evils of Trump, the man. That tactic failed the Clinton campaign, again because volatility
voters weren't concerned with the niceties. And the same tactic is failing the press now. Failing
unless, of course, you're the sort of sleaze merchant who
downsizes the newsroom because, hey, it's all about the clicks.
"... Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against fair distribution of profits in the economy. ..."
"... The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism, nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party. ..."
"... Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade and reduction in government spending. ..."
"... One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings. Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and a half centuries. ..."
"... As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market. We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism," and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies. ..."
"... it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing to allow. ..."
"... I am suggesting that the issue is not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them. ..."
I will go with worth reading. I don't think that is controversial at all and there is way more
than an element of truth in it. But knowing is one thing and organizing politically in a manner
sufficient to bring about change is entirely another.
They are correct. We need an alternative to Nationalism and Trump.
They are not correct about mysterious elites controlling things.
The elites pursued anti-regulatory policies that allowed them to reap short term profits without
regard for stability or sustainability. It is not government control but lack of regulation that
allowed BIgF to run wild and unaccountable.
Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy.
The plant closures are headlined and promote the mistaken belief that globalization is the
prime cause of job loss. These large closures are only 1/10th of the job losses and dislocations
due to automation and transformation from manufacturing to service economies. Wealthy elites are
allowed to greedily hoard all the profits from automation and not enough is being invested in
the service economy. Austerity is not a policy to control the masses, it is a policy to protect
the wealth accumulated by elites from fair distribution.
Trump is not going to bring manufacturing plants back to American rural backwaters. Those left
behind must build their own service economy or relocate to a sustainable region that is making
the transition.
The key point here is that as long as there is no viable alternative to neoliberalism,
nationalism is the only game in town for the opposition forces. That's why trade union members
now abandoned neoliberal (aka Clintonized ) Democratic Party.
All Western societies now, not only the USA, experience nationalist movements Renaissance.
And that's probably why Hillary lost as she represented "kick the can down the road" neoliberal
globalization agenda.
An important point also is that nationalism itself is not monolithic. There are at least two
different types of nationalism in the West now:
ethnic nationalism (old-style), where the "ethnicity" is the defining feature of belonging
to the "in-group"
cultural nationalism (new style), where the defining traits of belonging to the "in-group"
is the language and culture, not ethnicity.
As for your statement
"Trump may be a Nationalist, but he is also an anti-regulatory elite with no regard for
business ethics or accountability to the community. He is also for "greedy take all" and against
fair distribution of profits in the economy."
This might be true, but might be not. It is not clear what Trump actually represents. Let's
give him the benefit of doubt and wait 100 days before jumping to conclusions.
Traditionally, Neoliberalism espouses privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free
trade and reduction in government spending.
What exactly did Clinton want to privatize? What budget did she propose slashing? Did
she want to deregulate banks or environmental regulations?
She supported some trade liberalization, but also imposing sanctions. What government spending
did she want to reduce?
Fact: She supported the opposite of most of these policies.
Donald Trump promised to pursue all of these Neoliberal policies. The GOP and their propaganda
megaphone is very good at tarring the opposition as supporting the very policies they are enacting.
They made Al Gore into a liar, John Kerry into a coward with a purple band aid and Hillary into
a Wall Street shill. None of this is true. But Trump and his GOP are doing all the things you
accuse Democrats of doing.
You are wrong. Your definition of neoliberalism is formally right and we can argue along those
lines that Hillary is a neoliberal too (Her track record as a senator suggests exactly that),
it is way too narrow. There is more to it:
"One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings."
(see below)
"Another way to say it is that the state has become the market, the market has become the
state, and therefore both have ceased to exist in the form we have classically understood them."
"In the current election campaign, Hillary Clinton has been the most perfect embodiment
of neoliberalism among all the candidates, she is almost its all-time ideal avatar, and I believe
this explains, even if not articulated this way, the widespread discomfort among the populace
toward her ascendancy. People can perceive that her ideology is founded on a conception of
human beings striving relentlessly to become human capital (as her opening campaign commercial
so overtly depicted), which means that those who fail to come within the purview of neoliberalism
should be rigorously ostracized, punished, and excluded.
This is the dark side of neoliberalism's ideological arm (a multiculturalism founded on
human beings as capital), which is why this project has become increasingly associated with
suppression of free speech and intolerance of those who refuse to go along with the kind of
identity politics neoliberalism promotes.
And this explains why the 1990s saw the simultaneous and absolutely parallel rise, under
the Clintons, of both neoliberal globalization and various regimes of neoliberal disciplining,
such as the shaming and exclusion of former welfare recipients (every able-bodied person should
be able to find work, therefore under TANF welfare was converted to a performance management
system designed to enroll everyone in the workforce, even if it meant below-subsistence wages
or the loss of parental responsibilities, all of it couched in the jargon of marketplace incentives)."
In this sense Hillary Clinton is 100% dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal and neocon ("neoliberal with
the gun"). She promotes so called "neoliberal rationality" a perverted "market-based" rationality
typical for neoliberalism:
== quote ==
When Hillary Clinton frequently retorts-in response to demands for reregulation of finance,
for instance-that we have to abide by "the rule of law," this reflects a particular understanding
of the law, the law as embodying the sense of the market, the law after it has undergone a
revolution of reinterpretation in purely economic terms.
In this revolution of the law persons have no status compared to corporations, nation-states
are on their way out, and everything in turn dissolves before the abstraction called the market.
One way to sum up neoliberalism is to say that everything-everything-is to be made over
in the image of the market, including the state, civil society, and of course human beings.
Democracy becomes reinterpreted as the market, and politics succumbs to neoliberal economic
theory, so we are speaking of the end of democratic politics as we have known it for two and
a half centuries.
As the market becomes an abstraction, so does democracy, but the real playing field
is somewhere else, in the realm of actual economic exchange-which is not, however, the market.
We may say that all exchange takes place on the neoliberal surface.
Neoliberalism is often described-and this creates a lot of confusion-as "market fundamentalism,"
and while this may be true for neoliberal's self-promotion and self-presentation, i.e., the
market as the ultimate and only myth, as were the gods of the past, I would argue that in neoliberalism
there is no such thing as the market as we have understood it from previous ideologies.
The neoliberal state-actually, to utter the word state seems insufficient here, I would
claim that a new entity is being created, which is not the state as we have known it, but an
existence that incorporates potentially all the states in the world and is something that exceeds
their sum-is all-powerful, it seeks to leave no space for individual self-conception in
the way that classical liberalism, and even communism and fascism to some degree, were willing
to allow.
There are competing understandings of neoliberal globalization, when it comes to the question
of whether the state is strong or weak compared to the primary agent of globalization, i.e.,
the corporation, but I am taking this logic further, I am suggesting that the issue is
not how strong the state is in the service of neoliberalism, but whether there is anything
left over beyond the new definition of the state. Another way to say it is that the state has
become the market, the market has become the state, and therefore both have ceased to exist
in the form we have classically understood them.
Of course the word hasn't gotten around to the people yet, hence all the confusion about
whether Hillary Clinton is more neoliberal than Barack Obama, or whether Donald Trump will
be less neoliberal than Hillary Clinton.
The project of neoliberalism-i.e., the redefinition of the state, the institutions of society,
and the self-has come so far along that neoliberalism is almost beyond the need of individual
entities to make or break its case. Its penetration has gone too deep, and none of the democratic
figureheads that come forward can fundamentally question its efficacy.
It came as a part of series of three separate executive actions that President Trump took on
Monday.
"The first is a withdrawal of the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership," White
House chief of staff Reince Priebus said, explaining the first executive action President Trump
was taking in the list of three. The other two were one freezing hiring of all federal employees
except in the military, and one that restores the Mexico City policy.
As President Trump signed the executive action killing the TPP, he announced for the cameras
in the oval office that it was a "great thing for the American worker, what we just did."
Trump campaigned heavily against TPP, so it's only fitting he'd crush it once and for all on
his first business day as President of the United States. It's his efforts campaigning against
it-and the efforts of failed presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-that shook Washington's
political establishment, and eventually forced failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Rodham Clinton to come out against the deal that was supposed to be a legacy achievement of now
former President Barack Obama.
Trump hammered TPP repeatedly throughout his campaign and even leading up to it in speeches
and interviews, including many exclusive interviews with Breitbart News.
"... The era of neoliberalism ended in the autumn of 2008 with the bonfire of financialisation's illusions. The fetishisation of unfettered markets that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought to the fore in the late 1970s had been the necessary ideological cover for the unleashing of financiers to enable the capital flows essential to a new phase of globalisation in which the United States deficits provided the aggregate demand for the world's factories (whose profits flowed back to Wall Street closing the loop nicely). ..."
"... when the bottom fell out of this increasingly unstable feedback loop, neoliberalism's illusions burned down and the west's working class ended up too expensive and too indebted to be of interest to a panicking global establishment. ..."
"... Thatcher's and Reagan's neoliberalism had sought to persuade that privatisation of everything would produce a fair and efficient society unimpeded by vested interests or bureaucratic fiat. That narrative, of course, hid from public view what was really happening: a tremendous buildup of super-state bureaucracies, unaccountable supra-state institutions (World Trade Organisation, Nafta, the European Central Bank), behemoth corporations, and a global financial sector heading for the rocks. ..."
"... Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost its ambition to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to declare in writing that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika forced the Greek or Irish governments to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based bankers at the expense of their people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation. Similarly, in America the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the failed health system. ..."
"... It was against this insurgency of a cornered establishment that had given up on persuasion that Donald Trump and his European allies rose up with their own populist insurgency. They proved that it is possible to go against the establishment and win. Alas, theirs will be a pyrrhic victory which will, eventually, harm those whom they inspired. The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot be the retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of "our" people against "others" fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences. ..."
"... This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of working class jobs to emerging markets. ..."
"... Until there is a viable alternative economic philosophy, nationalism is the future, whether we like it or not. ..."
"... Enough is enough. Globalisation is now only working for the rich and powerful. The model is simple - globalisation lowers the cost for consumers of everything, because the lowest cost geography produces everything (China, India etc), which is great until nobody has a job any more, so nobody can afford anything. ..."
"... The challenge is not to stick with the status quo, it's to find an alternative to nationalism that works for everyone. ..."
"... Fine words, but we're along way from that right now. What's happening in Europe, and across the Atlantic, is really only just getting started. Our elites may well be suffering from a crisis of legitimacy, and yet they are still very much in control. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is based on the acceptance that the rich elite are deserving of their wealth and privileges. The elite have used their mouthpieces, such as tabloids and think tanks, to ram this home; but the banking crisis of 2008 helped disabuse people of this myth that justifies rampant inequality in the US and the UK in particular. ..."
"... Trump and Brexit are expressions of the paradigm shift that is underway; but up till now, rather ironically, a billionaire and a rich former stockbroker have been the voice of protest, because it is they who have the money, connections and vanity to ensure they are heard. ..."
"... These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they have keen interest in its continuation. But while their use of political power has enabled the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization. ..."
"... Some of the gains of the top 5 percent could go toward alleviating the anger of the lower- and middle-class rich world's "losers." ..."
"... the history of the last quarter century during which the top classes in the rich world have continually piled up larger and larger gains, all the while socially and mentally separating themselves from fellow citizens, does not bode well for that alternative ..."
"... Social Neoliberals (mass immigration, family breakdown, individualism etc) combine with economic Neoliberals (profit maximisation, global capital movements etc) to get their way. ..."
"... I'm fairly sure that in time it will be shown that thier is a cabal of think-tanks and supranationalists who have perverted everything to thier own benefit. How and why does a Labour Peer get free accomodation on Baron Rothschilds' estate? How and why does the royal bank Coutts get bailed out by the taxpayer with no strings attached? ..."
The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot be a retreat to barricaded nation-states and the pitting
of 'our' people against 'others' fenced off by high walls
A clash of two insurgencies is now shaping the west. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic
are on the sidelines, unable to comprehend what they are observing. Donald Trump's inauguration marks
its pinnacle.
One of the two insurgencies shaping our world today has been analysed ad nauseum. Donald Trump,
Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and the broad Nationalist International that they are loosely connected
to have received much attention, as has their success at impressing upon the multitudes that nation-states,
borders, citizens and communities matter.
However, the other insurgency that caused the rise of this Nationalist International has remained
in the shadows: an insurrection by the global establishment's technocracy whose purpose is to
retain control at all cost. Project Fear in the UK, the troika in continental Europe and the unholy
alliance of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the surveillance apparatus in the United States are
its manifestations.
The era of neoliberalism ended in the autumn of 2008 with the bonfire of financialisation's
illusions. The fetishisation of unfettered markets that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought
to the fore in the late 1970s had been the necessary ideological cover for the unleashing of financiers
to enable the capital flows essential to a new phase of globalisation in which the United States
deficits provided the aggregate demand for the world's factories (whose profits flowed back to Wall
Street closing the loop nicely).
Meanwhile, billions of people in the "third" world were pulled out of poverty while hundreds of
millions of western workers were slowly sidelined, pushed into more precarious jobs, and forced to
financialise themselves either through their pension funds or their homes. And when the bottom
fell out of this increasingly unstable feedback loop, neoliberalism's illusions burned down and the
west's working class ended up too expensive and too indebted to be of interest to a panicking global
establishment.
Thatcher's and Reagan's neoliberalism had sought to persuade that privatisation of everything
would produce a fair and efficient society unimpeded by vested interests or bureaucratic fiat. That
narrative, of course, hid from public view what was really happening: a tremendous buildup of super-state
bureaucracies, unaccountable supra-state institutions (World Trade Organisation, Nafta, the European
Central Bank), behemoth corporations, and a global financial sector heading for the rocks.
After the events of 2008 something remarkable happened. For the first time in modern times the
establishment no longer cared to persuade the masses that its way was socially optimal. Overwhelmed
by the collapsing financial pyramids, the inexorable buildup of unsustainable debt, a eurozone in
an advanced state of disintegration and a China increasingly relying on an impossible credit boom,
the establishment's functionaries set aside the aspiration to persuade or to represent. Instead,
they concentrated on clamping down.
In the UK, more than a million benefit applicants faced punitive sanctions. In the Eurozone, the
troika ruthlessly sought to reduce the pensions of the poorest of the poor. In the United States,
both parties promised drastic cuts to social security spending. During our deflationary times none
of these policies helped stabilise capitalism at a national or at a global level. So, why were they
pursued?
Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost its ambition
to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to declare in writing
that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika forced the Greek or Irish governments
to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based
bankers at the expense of their people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation.
Similarly, in America the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the
failed health system.
It was against this insurgency of a cornered establishment that had given up on persuasion
that Donald Trump and his European allies rose up with their own populist insurgency. They proved
that it is possible to go against the establishment and win. Alas, theirs will be a pyrrhic victory
which will, eventually, harm those whom they inspired. The answer to neoliberalism's Waterloo cannot
be the retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of "our" people against "others" fenced
off by tall walls and electrified fences.
The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both sides of
the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by power. We need to
aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope throughout Europe and America
for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for social housing, for health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans can
restore to a billion people living in the west sovereignty over their lives and communities.
bag0shite
This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes
from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of
working class jobs to emerging markets.
Liberalism has created so much wealth for the west and has dramatically reduced inequality
over the last century, however it is no longer working for those on lower incomes in the west.
Until there is a viable alternative economic philosophy, nationalism is the future,
whether we like it or not.
chantaspell -> bag0shite 1d ago
nationalism is the future, whether we like it or not.
No it's not. Because what we've got, although flawed, is far superior to Nationalism's
false promises. Nationalism will, or perhaps already has, peaked.
bag0shite -> chantaspell
... go and tell that to all the families who don't have a job because their roles were
offshored to Eastern Europe or China. Got and tell that to truck drivers who earn a pittance
because there is essentially an infinite supply of Poles willing to do it for peanuts.
Enough is enough. Globalisation is now only working for the rich and powerful. The model
is simple - globalisation lowers the cost for consumers of everything, because the lowest cost
geography produces everything (China, India etc), which is great until nobody has a job any
more, so nobody can afford anything.
The challenge is not to stick with the status quo, it's to find an alternative to
nationalism that works for everyone.
MMGALIAS -> bag0shite 1d ago
This is all about globalisation, specifically wage deflation for the working classes
from competing with emerging markets and freedom of movement, and also from offshoring of
working class jobs to emerging markets.
The working classes have voted against their own interests in the last 3 decades, now we
are all supposed to feel sorry for them when the neoliberal policies they have voted for have
come back to bite them?
Northman1
"The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both sides
of the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by power. We
need to aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope throughout Europe
and America for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for social housing, for
health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans
can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives and
communities".
These are fine aspirations. You precede them by saying that we cannot:
"...retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the pitting of 'our' people against 'others'
fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences".
This presumably refers to physical barriers to prevent illegal immigration and tariff barriers
to prevent free trade.
Tell me though how you can achieve the aspirations you set out whilst allowing millions of
people from the third world to flood into Europe at an enormous economic and social cost and
also trading freely with countries that don't trade fairly (e.g. China with its currency
manipulation, government subsidies, product dumping and lack of environmental/ safety/ worker
protection regulations)
greenwichite -> Northman1
He's brilliant on the problem...lame on the solution.
And wrong.
The answer is to only trade freely with countries that play by the same environmental,
currency and labour-rights rules as we do.
Otherwise, we are just allowing ourselves to be undercuts by cheats.
That's not "barricading" oneself anywhere...it's basic common sense, which has
unfortunately eluded our leaders for decades. In Thatcher's case, I think she was quite happy
for mercantilist, protectionist Asian powers to destroy our industry, for her own
party-political purposes.
MMGALIAS -> Northman1
and also trading freely with countries that don't trade fairly (e.g. China with its
currency manipulation, government subsidies, product dumping and lack of environmental/
safety/ worker protection regulations)
The West doesn't trade freely either, just ask the African farmers who are tariffed into
poverty by the EU.
Tiresius -> legalizefreedom
I agree. It's a well argued piece and I agree with the conclusion that neither the neo
liberal free trade consensus , nor its reaction , will provide an answer to the worsening
economic condition of the blue collar west. I also am convinced that in the longer term the
only real answer is a return to the principles of social democracy and equity of opportunity.
This will however be a long march. Neo liberalism has been in the ascendant for over 30
years , it has brought some significant benefits to a few in the west , and many elsewhere ,
and of course a lot of Chinese billionaires , a large number of western voters have lost or
are losing faith in a system that has failed to deliver rising living standards for them ,
incurred high levels of debt and reduced social mobility.
It is a failure of the narrative of the centre left that those people are persuaded by
increasing protectionism rather than social democracy. So now we will see where the reaction
to free trade liberalism takes us , it has to run its course before the prescriptions of
social democracy can be reformulated , hopefully with more inspiring leaders than at present.
Andrew Skidmore
'Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and
Europeans can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives
and communities.'
Fine words, but we're along way from that right now. What's happening in Europe, and
across the Atlantic, is really only just getting started. Our elites may well be suffering
from a crisis of legitimacy, and yet they are still very much in control.
From the Trump administration Whitehouse website:
'The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration. President Trump
will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the
public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration
will end it.'
Hmmmmmm....?
thetowncrier -> Andrew Skidmore
As ever, a master of subtlety. I expect the American Stasi to come into being by the end of
next week, with a brand new special 'badge' to go with their black shirts.
2bveryFrank
Neoliberalism is based on the acceptance that the rich elite are deserving of their
wealth and privileges. The elite have used their mouthpieces, such as tabloids and think
tanks, to ram this home; but the banking crisis of 2008 helped disabuse people of this myth
that justifies rampant inequality in the US and the UK in particular.
Trump and Brexit are expressions of the paradigm shift that is underway; but up till
now, rather ironically, a billionaire and a rich former stockbroker have been the voice of
protest, because it is they who have the money, connections and vanity to ensure they are
heard.
They, however, are very unlikely to deliver and then true and genuine voices of the people
will emerge - voices that will target the root causes of discontent rather than convenient,
nationalistic scapegoats such as immigration.
ReasonableSoul -> 2bveryFrank
"and then true and genuine voices of the people will emerge - voices that will target
the root causes of discontent rather than convenient, nationalistic scapegoats such as
immigration."
So working class people who struggle to compete for the low wage jobs and strained welfare
services that are taken by migrants are not allowed to protest immigration policy?
Recent mass migrations (of the last 30 years) are unprecedented.
In Europe, whole towns have been transformed, particularly culturally.
Imposing huge demographic changes on a people is a form of authoritarian social
engineering.
SeenItAlready
This is covered by a report in YaleGlobal (and a similar one in the Harvard Business
Review) from 2014 which adds a few stats showing how middle-class salaries in the 'Western
World' were the only ones to stagnate in the period 1998 to 2008 (and obviously drop post
2008, but that isn't covered):
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/tale-two-middle-classes
This is the last section of that report:
The populists warn disgruntled voters that economic trends observed during the past
three decades are just the first wave of cheap labor from Asia pitted in direct competition
with workers in the rich world, and more waves are on the way from poorer lands in Asia and
Africa. The stagnation of middle-class incomes in the West may last another five decades or
more.
This calls into question either the sustainability of democracy under such conditions or
the sustainability of globalization.
If globalization is derailed, the middle classes of the West may be relieved from the
immediate pressure of cheaper Asian competition. But the longer-term costs to themselves
and their countries, let alone to the poor in Asia and Africa, will be high. Thus, the
interests and the political power of the middle classes in the rich world put them in a
direct conflict with the interests of the worldwide poor.
These classes of "globalization losers," particularly in the United States, have had
little political voice or influence, and perhaps this is why the backlash against
globalization has been so muted. They have had little voice because the rich have come to
control the political process. The rich, as can be seen by looking at the income gains of
the global top 5 percent in Figure 1, have benefited immensely from globalization and they
have keen interest in its continuation. But while their use of political power has enabled
the continuation of globalization, it has also hollowed out national democracies and moved
many countries closer to becoming plutocracies. Thus, the choice would seem either
plutocracy and globalization – or populism and a halt to globalization.
Another solution, one that involves neither populism nor plutocracy, would require enormous
effort at the understanding of one's own longer-term self-interest. It would imply more
substantial redistribution policies in the rich world. Some of the gains of the top 5
percent could go toward alleviating the anger of the lower- and middle-class rich world's
"losers." These need not nor should be mere transfers of money from one group to
another.
Instead, money should come in the form of investments in public education, local
infrastructure, housing and preventive health care. But the history of the last quarter
century during which the top classes in the rich world have continually piled up larger and
larger gains, all the while socially and mentally separating themselves from fellow
citizens, does not bode well for that alternative
Personally I see the whole US election here... written a couple of years before it
happened:
Hillary as Globalisation
Trump as Populism
And Bernie (who as the report suggests wasn't even allowed by the Globalist forces to -
present himself) as Redistribution
moranet -> Rusty Woods
Just as in the 1920s early 30s, when centrist governments attempting mild redistributive
banking reforms -MacDonald, Herriot, Van Zeeland, Azaña- came up against a "Wall of Money"
when the financial markets reacted, and were overthrown in favour of orthodox liberal
governments (the 'technocratic insugency' described by Prof. Varoufakis). And when public
opinion inevitably lost its patience, propelling harder nosed reformers close to power...
that's when political and financial elites discovered rule by executive decree and the
adjournment of parliaments.
So we know very well what happens next in Europe, when liberal capitalism and
liberal-democracy find themselves on opposing teams.
anewdawn
There are two sorts of nationalism in my view. There is the nasty, evil, Nazi style that
promotes the insane social darwinism, and superiority, but a hypocritical imperialism towards
other states and countries.
There is another type of nationalism that good decent people who really care about
democracy would approve of however. It is the sort that seeks to protect the poor and the
middle classes by stopping global corporations from off shoring their jobs to sweatshops in
countries that have lower human rights records for the purpose of cheap labour and more
profit. There is the sort of nationalism that promotes local democracy as opposed to tying
countries up to TTIP and TPP which undermines the governments and laws of individual
countries. There is a type of nationalism that seeks to protect their neighbors by insisting
on fair trade and good treatment of workers in other countries.
If you listen to Trumps speech, he seems to be the second type when he promises to bring
back jobs to the rust belt, but only time will tell if he really is of the first type - it
will surface soon in his attitude to invasions of the middle east and control of the global
corporations.
ID0118186 -> anewdawn
But those same middle classes are part of the problem, they want their consumer goods,
their iPods and iPhones and iPads, but they don't want to pay the real cost of them if they
were made by well-paid and well-trained skilled workers in their own country.
You have to address the whole issue: you can't have cheap prices and protectionism, unless you
let wages fall to near the same level that they are in developing countries - also unpopular.
So if you want nationalism as you describe it, be willing to pay 50 to 100% more for many
goods and services; or buy a lot less, which kills your economy anyway.
epidavros -> anewdawn
And then there is also the phoney internationalism of the EU - which is really a turbo
charged nationalism of what will soon be 27 countries bent on protectionism, technocratic rule
and a firmly closed mindset with a firmly debunked ideology.
toadalone -> anewdawn
I like your description of the two nationalisms. I think Varoufakis' point is that that
kind of nationalism can't survive on its own, as an island in a globalised world: nationalists
of that kind have to work together with their neighbouring counterparts to make their
respective benign nationalisms function. It's a very difficult proposal to bring to fruition,
even though I think it's right.
As for Trump: I think that seasoning campaign speeches with a flavour of benign nationalism
is, sadly, little more than a well-established PR technique. I don't believe what Trump says
for an instant (partly because he constantly breaks the fourth wall by saying the complete
opposite a few days later).
Other leaders who deploy this flavour of nationalism are more complicated. Viktor Orbán, for
instance. It's very difficult to tell, with him, how much of his protectionist-nationalist
rhetoric is genuine (but impossible to implement, given Hungary's membership of the EU), and
how much of it is just more of the same
dangle-shiny-things-in-front-of-the-voters-while-doing-what-you-want. And as with Trump,
Orbán's "benign" nationalism comes as just one flavour in a dish also heavily flavoured with
demented backward-looking authoritarian nationalism, with Kulturkampf and all the other
trimmings.
The weird thing about Trump is how he turns these contradictions into a kind of conscious
performance art. It's possible to view Orbán as someone who's cracking up a bit under the
pressure of believing six impossible things before breakfast. Trump is more healthy (from the
Trump's own point of view, of course, not from ours). He's embraced the crazy completely, and
revels in it. While probably reserving some quiet time for himself, in which he can privately
drop the mask, or rather the 500 different masks.
QuayBoredWarrior -> ReubenK1
Perhaps you should read this bit again:
The answer can only be a Progressive Internationalism that works in practice on both
sides of the Atlantic. To bring it about we need more than fine principles unblemished by
power. We need to aim for power on the basis of a pragmatic narrative imparting hope
throughout Europe and America for jobs paying living wages to anyone who wants them, for
social housing, for health and education.
Only a third insurgency promoting a New Deal that works equally for Americans and Europeans
can restore to a billion people living in the West sovereignty over their lives and
communities.
If you need to know what the New Deal involved, I suggest you Google it or buy a book about
it. If there is a library still open near you, you might able to borrow a book for free.
I think what is suggested is a new New Deal, an interventionist strategy to replace the
laissez-faire, the-market-knows-best approaches of the 80s/90s/00s. The details of which will
need to be hammered out as we progress. BTW, the New Deal was a haphazard and piecemeal
programme that was often based on hope over accepted wisdom. The aim was stabilisation and an
end to the mass impoverishment of American workers. If we have this aim, I'm sure we can work
out what needs to be done. It won't only be professors who come up with suggestions but all
those who coalesce behind these aims.
The first thing necessary is to loosen the grip of those who bang on about deficit
reduction above all else. This counter-productive approach needs to be crushed. It works for
no one and it doesn't work for the future. The services being destroyed will have to be built
up again and the deficit-above-all-else proselytisers have no strategy for this at all. It's
as if their true aim is to see them destroyed forever.
SeenItAlready
Their purpose was to impose acquiescence to a clueless establishment that had lost
its ambition to maintain its legitimacy. When the UK government forced benefit claimants to
declare in writing that "my only limits are the ones I set myself", or when the troika
forced the Greek or Irish governments to write letters "requesting" predatory loans from
the European Central Bank that benefited Frankfurt-based bankers at the expense of their
people, the idea was to maintain power via calculated humiliation. Similarly, in America
the establishment habitually blamed the victims of predatory lending and the failed health
system.
Not only that...
They also came out with the wheeze of getting the poor to fight amongst themselves
I'm convinced that is what is behind the explosion in Identity Politics we have seen over the
last few years - where different groups are encouraged to dislike each other on gender,
gender-orientation and and racial lines. Of course social class is kept well out of any of
these discussions... in spite of it being the source of most of the real repression
SeenItAlready -> SeenItAlready
different groups are encouraged to dislike each other on gender, gender-orientation and and
racial lines. Of course social class is kept well out of any of these discussions... in spite
of it being the source of most of the real repression
Likewise immigration where the immigrants themselves are made an issue of and blamed or
defended... of course in reality salary dumping and job losses have nothing to do with them
The wealthy class who encouraged the immigration of cheap labour, who did not provide any
protection for workers impacted by it and who then effectively sacked local workers in favour
of cheaper labour have again pulled-off a very neat trick by shifting the terms of the debate
to the innocent immigrants who were simply following opportunity and invitations. Likewise the
immigrants feel that they are being persecuted by the locals...
And so the rich sit back and rub their hands with glee... poor immigrants and poor locals
fighting, poor men and poor women fighting, poor whites and poor non-whites fighting. No
chance of the pitchforks arriving for quite a while, if ever...
FreddySteadyGO -> SeenItAlready
And so the rich sit back and rub their hands with glee... poor immigrants and poor
locals fighting, poor men and poor women fighting, poor whites and poor non-whites
fighting. No chance of the pitchforks arriving for quite a while, if ever...
Absolutely, its all far too convenient.
Social Neoliberals (mass immigration, family breakdown, individualism etc) combine with
economic Neoliberals (profit maximisation, global capital movements etc) to get their way.
I'm fairly sure that in time it will be shown that thier is a cabal of think-tanks and
supranationalists who have perverted everything to thier own benefit. How and why does a
Labour Peer get free accomodation on Baron Rothschilds' estate? How and why does the royal
bank Coutts get bailed out by the taxpayer with no strings attached?
SeenItAlready -> FreddySteadyGO
My reply to you got totally deleted, it seems that saying to much about this subject is not
acceptable to these people, which I guess is no surprise considering...
I said in my removed message that I didn't think there was any 'conspiracy' and that it was
the normal divide-and-conquer behaviour which people in power have applied since time
immemorial to those they would wish to control
Now I've changed my mind...
mysterycalculator
Could it be that Francis Fukuyama got it wrong with his historicist vision of liberal
democracy as the final stage in a Hegelian dialectic? Should he have gone with Marx's
interpretation of Hegel's dialectic instead, arguing that political freedom without economic
freedom is not enough? If so, then the argument for a redistributive social justice has to be
the way forward. Though as Karl Popper was keen to point out, Hegal and historicist visions
are bunk. Though interestingly Popper had much more time for Marx. A redistributive social
justice within the checks and balances of a liberal democratic internationalist social order -
that might be a way forward!
Sven Ringling
As long as this problem is seen as a left vs right, we won't address it. Trump's ideas are
in many cases very left. He wants to subsidise jobs through tarifs/trade wars/ anything that
reduces imports and therefore benefits job creation in their large market with a large trade
deficit in the short run.
Corbyn wants to subsidise the poorer part of the population directly or through public
services taking the money directly from businesses and the rich - though he is not disinclined
to isolationism either.
Both recipies work in the short run, both are likely to backfire in the long run the way
they are currently pushed.
It was Labour's big mistake to think UKIP is on the right and therefore a risk for the
Tories only.
And this Greek clown considered left is not far from that American clown. Clowny-ness is
actually their mist defining feature.
ReasonableSoul
Maintaining funcional borders is not a "retreat to a barricaded nation-state and the
pitting of 'our' people against 'others' fenced off by tall walls and electrified fences."
Even liberal Sweden became so overwhelmed by the endless stream of migrants/refugees
arriving that it had to shut the border.
ID614534 1d ago
2
3
Why does every debate about the nation state have to be economic? Peoples of the world are
often tied to their places of birth by language religion and culture. Not every song has to be
sung in an American accent and we don't all want to replace Nan's pie recipe with a Big Mac
and fries.
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epidavros 1d ago
6
7
Fine words, but the problem is that there is no progressive internationalism and there are no
real progressives. The response to the EU referendum widely seen to have been a call to end
unmanaged migration and undue interference of those very supra national, unaccountable elite
bodies you mention has been to call for the UK to be punished, to pay the price, to be treated
entirely differently from trade partners like Canada and dealt with as a pariah. Not
progressive. Not international. And very much the problem, not the cure.
The huge irony here is that with all this talk of populism and barricading behind borders the
UK and USA are seeking to tear theirs down, while the EU is erecting ideological barricades to
protect its elite and their project.
One thing is for sure - the solution is not the status quo. Either in the USA or the EU.
From amazon review of his book
In the Jaws of the Dragon "Anyone who has read "The World is Flat" should also read "In The
Jaws Of The Dragon" to understand both sides of the issues involved in offshoring. Eamon Fingleton clearly
defines the differences between the economic systems in play in China and Japan and the United States
and how those differences have damaged the United States economy. The naive position taken by both the
Republicans and the Democrats that offshoring is good for America is shown to be wrong because of a
fundamental lack of knowledge about who we are dealing with. Every member of Congress and the executive
branch should read this book before ratifying any more trade agreements. The old saying of the marketplace
applies: Take advantage of me once, shame on you. Take advantage of me twice, shame on me."
Notable quotes:
"... Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed their views to be shaped largely by the American press. ..."
"... That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003. ..."
"... Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism. ..."
"... In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. ..."
"... As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than the press makes out. ..."
"... So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability. ..."
"... In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart; number two, I'm a smart person." ..."
"... other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes from fed-up middle Americans. ..."
"... In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital evidence in the Kovaleski affair. ..."
Battlefield communications in World War I sometimes left something to be desired. Hence a famous
British anecdote of a garbled word-of-mouth message. As transmitted, the message ran, "Send reinforcements,
we are going to advance." Superior officers at the other end, however, were puzzled to be told: "Send
three and four-pence [three shillings and four-pence], we are going to a dance!"
Similar miscommunication probably helps explain the European media's unreflective scorn for
Donald Trump. Most European commentators have little or no access to the story. They have allowed
their views to be shaped largely by the American press.
That's a big mistake. Contrary to their carefully burnished self-image of impartiality and
reliability, American journalists are not averse to consciously peddling outright lies. This applies
even in the case of the biggest issues of the day, as witness, for instance, the American press's
almost unanimous validation of George Bush's transparently mendacious case for the Iraq war in 2003.
Most of the more damning charges against Trump are either without foundation or at least are
viciously unfair distortions. Take, for instance, suggestions in the run-up to the election that
he is anti-Semitic. In some accounts it was even suggested he was a closet neo-Nazi. Yet for anyone
remotely familiar with the Trump story, this always rang false. After all he had thrived for decades
in New York's overwhelmingly Jewish real estate industry. Then there was the fact that his daughter
Ivanka, to whom he is evidently devoted, had converted to Judaism.
Now as Trump embarks on office, his true attitudes are becoming obvious – and they hardly lean
towards neo-Nazism.
In appointing Jared Kushner his chief adviser, he has chosen an orthodox Jew (Kushner is Ivanka's
husband). Then there is David Friedman, Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel. Friedman is an outspoken
partisan of the Israeli right and he is among other things an apologist for the Netanyahu administration's
highly controversial settlement of the West Bank. Trump even wants to move the American embassy
in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This position is a favourite of the most ardently pro-Israel
section of the American Jewish community but is otherwise disavowed as insensitive to Palestinians
by most American policy analysts.
Many other examples could be cited of how the press has distorted the truth. It is interesting
to revisit in particular the allegation that Trump mocked a disabled man's disability. It is an allegation
which has received particular prominence in the press in Europe. But is Trump really such a heartless
ogre? Hardly.
As is often the case with Trumpian controversies, the facts are a lot more complicated than
the press makes out. The disabled-man episode began when, in defending an erstwhile widely ridiculed
contention that Arabs in New Jersey had publicly celebrated the Twin Towers attacks, Trump unearthed
a 2001 newspaper account broadly backed him up. But the report's author, Serge Kovaleski, demurred.
Trump's talk of "thousands" of Arabs, he wrote, was an exaggeration.
Trump fired back. Flailing his arms wildly in an impersonation of an embarrassed, backtracking
reporter, he implied that Kovaleski had succumbed to political correctness.
So far, so normal for the 2016 election campaign. But it turned out that Kovaleski was no
ordinary Trump-hating journalist. He suffers from arthrogryposis, a malady in which the joints are
malformed. For Trump's critics, this was manna from heaven. Instead of merely accusing the New York
real estate magnate of exaggerating a minor, if troubling, sideshow in U.S.-Arab relations, they
could now arraign him on the vastly more damaging charge of mocking someone's disability.
Trump's plea that he hadn't known that Kovaleski was handicapped was undermined when it emerged
that in the 1980s the two had not only met but Kovaleski had even interviewed Trump in Trump Tower.
That is an experience I know something about. I, like Kovaleski, once interviewed Trump in Trump
Tower. The occasion was an article I wrote for Forbes magazine in 1982. If Trump saw my by-line today,
would he remember that occasion 35 years ago? Probably not. The truth is that Trump, who has been
a celebrity since his early twenties, has been interviewed by thousands of journalists over the years.
A journalist would have to be seriously conceited – or be driven by a hidden agenda – to assume that
a VIP as busy as Trump would remember an occasion half a lifetime ago.
In any case in responding directly to the charge of mocking Kovaleski's disability, Trump
offered a convincing denial. "I would never do that," he said. "Number one, I have a good heart;
number two, I'm a smart person." Setting aside point one (although to the press's chagrin, many
of Trump's acquaintances have testified that a streak of considerable private generosity underlies
his tough-guy exterior), it is hard to see how anyone can question point two. In effect Trump is
saying he had a strong self-interest in not offending the disabled lobby let alone their millions
of sympathisers.
After all it was not as if there were votes in dissing the disabled. This stands in marked contrast
to other much discussed Trumpian controversies such as his disparaging remarks about Mexicans
and Muslims. In the case of both Mexican and Muslims, an effort to cut back immigration is a central
pillar of Trump's program and his remarks, though offensive, were clearly intended to garner votes
from fed-up middle Americans.
In reality, as the Catholics 4 Trump website has documented, the media have suppressed vital
evidence in the Kovaleski affair.
For a start Trump's frenetic performance bore no resemblance to arthrogryposis. Far from frantically
flailing their arms, arthrogryposis victims are uncommonly motionlessness. This is because relevant
bones are fused together. As Catholics 4 Trump pointed out, the media should have been expected to
have been chomping at the bit to interview Kovaleski and thus clinch the point about how ruthlessly
Trump had ridiculed a disabled man's disability.
The website added: "If the media had a legitimate story, that is exactly what they would have
done and we all know it. But the media couldn't put Kovaleski in front of a camera or they'd have
no story."
Catholics 4 Trump added that, in the same speech in which Trump did his Kovaleski impression,
he offered an almost identical performance to illustrate the embarrassment of a U.S. general with
whom he had clashed. In particular Trump had the general wildly flailing his arms. It goes without
saying that this general does not suffer from arthogryposis or any other disability. The common thread
in each case was merely an embarrassed, backtracking person. To say the least, commentators in Europe
who have portrayed Trump as having mocked Kovaleski's disability stand accused of superficial, slanted
reporting.
All this is not to suggest that Trump does not come to the presidency unencumbered with baggage.
He is exceptionally crude – at least he is in his latter-day reality TV manifestation (the Trump
I remember from my interview in 1982 was a model of restraint by comparison and in particular never
used any expletives). Moreover the latter-day Trump habit of picking Twitter fights with those who
criticize him tends merely to confirm a widespread belief that he is petty and thin-skinned.
Many of his pronouncements moreover have been disturbing and his abrasive manner will clearly
prove on balance a liability in the White House. That said, the press has never worked harder or
more dishonestly to destroy a modern American leader.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt, therefore, as he sets out to make America great again.
The truth is that American decline has gone much further than almost anyone outside American industry
understands. Trump's task is a daunting one.
Eamonn
Fingleton is an expert on America's trade problems and is the author of In Praise of Hard Industries:
Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity (Houghton Mifflin,
Boston). A version of this article appeared in the Dublin Ireland Sunday Business Post.
America's fate looks dicey in the showdown with the Chinese juggernaut, warns this vigorous jeremiad.
Fingleton (In Praise of Hard Industries) argues that China's "East Asian" development model of aggressive
mercantilism and a state-directed economy "effortlessly outperforms" America's fecklessly individualistic
capitalism
"... Trump's success of failure will be measured by one thing: number of factory jobs added or lost, series MANEMP at the St. Louis FRED website.* If he doesn't create at least about 100,000 a year, he's in trouble. ..."
"... Disruption of neoliberal status quo and sending Hillary and some other neocon warmongers packing is already an achievement, not matter how you slice it. ..."
"... And a hissy fit that some factions of CIA demonstrated just before inauguration (it should not be considered as a monolithic organization; more like feudal kingdom of competing and often hostile to each other and to Pentagon and FBI factions ) was a reaction to this setback to neoconservatives in Washington. ..."
"... If Trump does what he promised in foreign policy: to end the wars for the expansion of neoliberal empire and to end of Cold War II with Russia it will be a huge achievement, even if the US economics not recover from Obama's secular stagnation (oil prices probably will go higher this year, representing an important headwind) . ..."
"... While we are writing those posts nuclear forces of both the USA and Russia are on high alert, and if something happen (and proliferation of computers make this more rather then less likely), the leaders of both countries have less then 20 minutes to decide about launching a full scale nuclear war. Actually Russia now has less time because of forward movement of NATO forces. ..."
Trump's success of failure will be
measured by one thing: number of factory jobs added or lost, series MANEMP at the St. Louis FRED
website.* If he doesn't create at least about 100,000 a year, he's in trouble.
*assuming the data
continues to be reported if it goes south on him, or he doesn't insist that the method of measuring
change. Something that is a real fear.
Slightly OT, there is one well-known wonky government data site I am watching. I think there are
better than 50/50 odds it disappears within the next two weeks.
Disruption of neoliberal status
quo and sending Hillary and some other neocon warmongers packing is already an achievement,
not matter how you slice it.
And a hissy fit that some factions of CIA demonstrated just before inauguration (it should
not be considered as a monolithic organization; more like feudal kingdom of competing and often
hostile to each other and to Pentagon and FBI factions ) was a reaction to this setback to
neoconservatives in Washington.
If Trump does what he promised in foreign policy: to end the wars for the expansion of neoliberal
empire and to end of Cold War II with Russia it will be a huge achievement, even if the US
economics not recover from Obama's secular stagnation (oil prices probably will go higher this
year, representing an important headwind) .
No further escalation in geopolitical conflicts represents an important tailwind and might
help.
While we are writing those posts nuclear forces of both the USA and Russia are on high alert,
and if something happen (and proliferation of computers make this more rather then less likely),
the leaders of both countries have less then 20 minutes to decide about launching a full scale
nuclear war. Actually Russia now has less time because of forward movement of NATO forces.
Professor Stephen Cohen thinks that this is worse then Cuban Missile Crisis and he is an
expert in this area.
Am nteresting thought (replace imperialism with neoliberalism) : "I think that it is possible
that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from
being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most
self-defeating feature. "
Revival of far right in Europe also is connected with the crisis of neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the Neocons always try to. ..."
"... I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. ..."
"... I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature. ..."
"... Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is 21 st Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism" is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe. ..."
"... Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did sound like a paleo-liberal ..."
"... Today, when Trump pronounced the followings words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others. ..."
"... All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears. ..."
Just hours ago Donald Trump was finally sworn in as the President of the United States. Considering
all the threats hanging over this event, this is good news because at least for the time being, the
Neocons have lost their control over the Executive Branch and Trump is now finally in a position
to take action. The other good news is
Trump's inauguration speech which included this historical promise " We do not seek to impose
our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow ".
Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon? The mere fact of asking
the question is already an immensely positive development as nobody would have asked it had Hillary
Clinton been elected.
The other interesting feature of Trump's speech is that it centered heavily on people power and
on social justice. Again, the contrast with the ideological garbage from Clinton could not be greater.
Still, this begs a much more puzzling question: how much can a multi-billionaire capitalist be trusted
when he speaks of people power and social justice – not exactly what capitalists are known for, at
least not amongst educated people. Furthermore, a Marxist reader would also remind us that "
imperialism
is the highest stage of capitalism " and that it makes no sense to expect a capitalist to
suddenly renounce imperialism.
But what was generally true in 1916 is not necessarily true in 2017.
For one thing, let's begin by stressing that the Trump Presidency was only made possible by the
immense financial, economic, political, military and social crisis facing the USA today. Eight years
of Clinton, followed by eight years of Bush Jr and eight years of Obama have seen a massive and full-spectrum
decline in the strength of the United States which were sacrificed for the sake of the AngloZionist
Empire. This crisis is as much internal as it is external and the election of Trump is a direct consequence
of this crisis. In fact, Trump is the first one to admit that it is the terrible situation in which
the USA find themselves today that brought him to power with a mandate of the regular American people
(Hillary's "deplorables") to "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American
plutocracy, "great again". This might be something crucial: I cannot imagine Trump trying to
simply do "more of the same" like his predecessors did or trying to blindly double-down like the
Neocons always try to.
I am willing to bet that Trump really and sincerely believes that the USA is in a deep crisis
and that a new, different, sets of policies must be urgently implemented. If that assumption
of mine proves to be correct, then this is by definition very good news for the entire planet because
whatever Trump ends up doing (or not doing), he will at least not push his country into a nuclear
confrontation with Russia. And yes, I think that it is possible that Trump has come to the conclusion
that imperialism has stopped working for the USA, that far from being the solution to the contradictions
of capitalism, imperialism might well have become its most self-defeating feature.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning
from past mistakes? I think it is, and a good example of that is
21 st
Century Socialism , which has completely dumped the kind of militant atheism which was
so central to the 20 th century Socialist movement. In fact, modern "21st Century Socialism"
is very pro-Christian. Could 21 st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
Furthermore, the Trump inaugural speech did, according to RT commentators, sound in many aspects
like the kind of speech Bernie Sanders could have made. And I think that they are right. Trump did
sound like a paleo-liberal, something which we did not hear from him during the campaign. You
could also say that Trump sounded very much like Putin. The question is will he now also act like
Putin too?
There will be a great deal of expectations in Russia about how Trump will go about fulfilling
his campaign promises to deal with other countries. Today, when Trump pronounced the followings
words " We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the
understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first " he told the
Russians exactly what they wanted to hear: Trump does not pretend to be a "friend" of Russia and
Trump openly and unapologetically promises to care about his own people first, and that is exactly
what Putin has been saying and doing since he came to power in Russia: caring for the Russian people
first. After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others.
All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected
you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and goodwill
will sound like music to the Russian ears.
Then there are Trump's words about " forming new alliances " and uniting " the civilized
world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the
Earth ". They will also be received with a great deal of hope by the Russian people. If the USA
is finally serious about fighting terrorism and if they really wants to eradicate the likes of Daesh,
then Russia will offer her full support to this effort, including her military, intelligence, police
and diplomatic resources. After all, Russia has been advocating for " completely eradicating Radical
Islamic Terrorism from the face of the Earth " for decades.
There is no doubt in my mind at all that an alliance between Russia and the USA, even if limited
only to specific areas of converging or mutual interests, would be immensely beneficial for the entire
planet, and not for just these two countries: right now all the worst international crises are a
direct result from the "tepid war" the USA and Russia have been waging against each other. And just
like any other war, this war has been a fantastic waste of resources. Of course, this war was started
by the USA and it was maintained and fed by the Neocon's messianic ideology. Now that a realist like
Trump has come to power, we can finally hope for this dangerous and wasteful dynamic to be stopped.
The good news is that neither Trump nor Putin can afford to fail. Trump, because he has made an
alliance with Russia the cornerstone of his foreign policy during his campaign, and Putin because
he realizes that it is in the objective interests of Russia for Trump to succeed, lest the Neocon
crazies crawl back out from their basement. So both sides will enter into negotiations with a strong
desire to get things done and a willingness to make compromises as long as they do not affect crucial
national security objectives. I think that the number of issues on which the USA and Russia can agree
upon is much, much longer than the number of issues were irreconcilable differences remain.
So yes, today I am hopeful. More than anything else, I want to hope that Trump is "for real",
and that he will have the wisdom and courage to take strong action against his internal enemies.
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal
enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like
David Horowitz declaring
himself a supporter of Donald Trump ,
I get very, very concerned and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?". What is
certain is that in the near future one of us will soon become very disappointed. I just hope that
this shall not be me.
Could that really mean that the USA has given up its role of World Hegemon?
Well, another author here, David Chibo, seems to think that the intent is exactly the opposite:
for the US (the nation) to become World Hegemon. As opposed to what we have today, to
multinational capital being World Hegemon
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased
by seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago .and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to
save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart a
new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save
the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new
course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
It is so important to us all.
Guess you didn't watch the debate where Trump said there is a very large bubble over wall street,
and its bigger than the housing bubble (my words not Trumps) and our GDP the figures the government
puts out as David Stockman Reagan budget director said is very suspect to say the least, for I
have seen it stated anywhere from $16 trillion to $18 trillion and change much like the BLS report
I suspect.
Not much wiggle room for Trump a crashing bubble on wall street almost 100,000,000 un-employed
per the Lay-Off-List, no that fails to jibe with the figure the government puts out, much like
the GDP I suspect, and there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the debt will grow under
Trump as he re-builds the military, as more tax dollars are flushed down the drain to keep company
with the trillions already there.
Chalmers Johnson was right in his excellent books from Blowback to The Sorrows of Empire Militarism,Secrecy,and
the End of the Republic and our 900+ bases around the globe, can Trump change that close at least
half of those bases that cost us billions of dollars we don't have or will it be the status quo
I suspect it will be the later
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by
seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
Anonymous:
I can back up Horowitz being termed "a rapid maniac". Some time ago I met him at one of his
book signings. At that time I would be regarded as one of his disciples, i.e. his camp followers.
That changed once I actually met him. His eyes were those of a crazed man. Enough said!
"After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent to others.
All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who elected
you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship and
goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."
But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
And that's what it's all about.
Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.
The problem is that the issues between Russia and US are not that easy to resolve. For example,
will US keep the "anti-Iran" missile defense systems in East Europe? Will they continue to state
that Ukraine and Georgia will be in NATO? Will the recent NATO troops in Poland, Baltic states
and Romania stay? There are a few others, like the Ukraine problem – Crimea, Donbass, economic
collapse.
None of those issues are suitable for a deal. A deal requires things that either side can let
go. We don't have that here. Most likely the tensions will recede, some summits will be held,
a few common policies will be attempted (e.g. Middle East), but none of the really big issues
(missiles, NATO expansion, Crimea, Ukraine) will be addressed. US has gone too far down that road
to backtrack now – it is all logistics at this point. And logistics don't change short of something
like a war.
So we are stuck. But at least we are no longer heading towards a catastrophe.
The United States is in a deep crisis which nobody except Trump had the courage to discuss.
The United States Government has been overspending what is has been taking in by an average
of 875 billion dollars, per year, for last decade and a half.
Our national debt has ballooned to a hair under 20 trillion dollars in 16 years. from 5.7 trillion
in 2000.
Our Gross Domestic Product, on the other hand, is only 18.7 trillion having merely doubled
from 9.3 trillion in 2000.
A general crisis point for the solvency of a nation is when its national debt eclipses its
GDP, which happened to us two years ago....and the spread is growing, not tightening.
If this continues at its present course, the world will no longer wish to purchase our debt
and begin selling off our treasury bonds. The credit worthiness of the United States will be in
serious jeopardy...and the US dollar may be sacrificed as the worlds currency.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job to save
the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency ...and chart a new
course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
So one can be optimistic, the era of reckless war and obscene war spending is over...but its
really almost ten years to late for this.
Do not lose heart, however, there are many ways we can pay down our debt,quickly, without raising
income taxes.
And if we can GROW the economy at a healthy pace,without generating too much inflation, we
should be able to dodge the bullet.
I hope The Donald , and his cabinet, put their thinking caps on, and undertake policies which
are highly successful.
It is so important to us all.
I am not sure how President Trump wishes to tackle this but it will be his number one job
to save the United States from its ruinous policies of perpetual war and insolvency and chart
a new course , hopefully one of peace and prosperity.
There will be no more wars of choice because we simply cannot afford them.
That's an interesting point, the US does have creditors and it has reached its credit limit,
and hasn't exactly been making good investments with the money that was borrowed.
The real issues seem to be making spending efficient (for example US healthcare that costs
about 2x the Canadian rate per person for the same result), and rebasing production in the US
(more US taxpayers).
The Socialist UK government was in a similar position in the early 1970′s with a "welfare state"
that it couldn't afford, general industrial strife and a "class war". When the UK's creditors
saw that things weren't going to change they sold off government bonds and the country got the
"Sterling Crisis" with Sterling losing what was left of its Reserve Currency status.
At least Trump is indicating a political will for change, but he needs to act quickly.
When I see rabid maniacs like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump
Saying someone's a "rabid maniac" without giving any reason for one's statement is so... mainstream
media like.
So far as I know, the mature-age Horowitz has written some interesting books: I can recommend
Hating Whitey , One party classrooms , Left illusion . His autobiography
( A point in time ot something like that) is a good book too.
He is also a very active anti-crazy left activist, and runs a site with a list of leftist anti-white
hate groups.
I hope I said enough for you to understand why I am surprised and not particularly pleased by
seeing him called a "rabid maniac".
I listened to Trump's speech live on headphones while power walking on a country road. Something
about that scenario allowed me to give it a focus that I may not have had if I was watching it
on the idiot box or reading a transcript.
If I'm not mistaken, he literally called most of his esteemed guests ( ex-presidents especially)
corrupt criminals, frauds and traitors. An unbelievable moment where the mob was reminded that
politicians are not to be fawned over. They work for the people.
The rest of the speech of course was lyrics for a remake of the song 'Dream the Impossible
Dream'. But still, if the population wasn't attention deficit affected, that part of his speech
could have been right up there with Ike's MIC moment.
This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning
from past mistakes? Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief
that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically
zilch to do with imperialism?
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common:
their internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs
like David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned
and I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".
David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike "
renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country
(the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of
respect.
@Chet Roman "drain the DC swamp" and "make America", as opposed to the American plutocracy,
"great again"
While I am hopeful and will give Trump the chance to prove himself. Unfortunately, he like Obama
before him, has appointed most the same plutocrats/neoliberal parasites in his administration
that are part of what the Saker calls the "AngloZionist Empire". Will they, like the patrician
FDR, promote policies against their own class interests? Time will tell but, after the same betrayal
by "Hope and Change" Obama I would not bet on it.
Not that I'm very sanguine about all the Goldman Sachs people in Trump's cabinet either, but
if you're looking for reasons for optimism: At least Trump–unlike Clinton, Bush and Obama–hasn't
appointed any retreads; i.e., people who've served in previous cabinets. That may indicate that
some change is in the offing. Let's hope it's a change for the best.
The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP ..Our GDP should
ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not . it's bad news.
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T) it is such bad news our big media has
refused to discuss it ..The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.
The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because
it makes them accountable.
The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.
Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over
two trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back
in the plus column.
Do you want to know how ?
He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people
, our country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there .and he has chosen to recognize
this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry
and the values that make us who we are ..
He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act
of deception , so that it may never happen again.
Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire
oligarchs who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .
Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls
and seizes all their assets .If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .
then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars
If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt .then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio
is right back in the" plus column" .
Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same ..the new ratio is 17.1 T
Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.
Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".
Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the
good people who would never "lie us into war".
This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care
of business at home, and clean house when necessary.
This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as
they would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.
Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?
300 Words
@Anon "After all, caring for your own first hardly implies being hostile or even indifferent
to others. All it means is that your loyalty and your service is first and foremost to those who
elected you to office. This refreshing patriotic honesty, combined with the prospect of friendship
and goodwill will sound like music to the Russian ears."
But it could mean NOT putting Zionist-Globalist interest first.
And that's what it's all about.
Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism.
"Gentiles don't mind each nation putting its interest first. But that means gentiles putting
their national interests above Jewish elitist interest.
Since nationalism favors gentile interests, Jews have pushed globalism and Zionism. That way,
all gentile nations are to favor globalism(that favors Jewish worldwide networking) over nationalism
and favor Zionism(Jewish nationalism) over any gentile nationalism."
That seems to be true.
I was shocked to read a letter in the current London Review of Books, actually a rebuttal to another
letter, by Adam Tooze. Tooze had written a review of a book by Wolfgang Streeck. In his rebuttal
Tooze attacked Streeck as an anti-Semite because Streeck had *dared* to write a book that presents
arguments for the primacy of the nation-state as opposed to globalist forces. Tooze's argument
basically came down to: nation-state = chauvinism = anti-Semitism, where globalization = "Semitism,"
I suppose, and Tooze actually more or less accused Streeck of anti-Semitism on this basis: that
you cannot defend the idea of the nation-state without being in effectively anti-Semitic. He didn't
show any other evidence but just this supposed syllogism, all of it theoretical. Interestingly
Tooze was the one making the equation of globalism and Jews-not Streeck! But still, Streeck was
the guilty one. Tooze spent a lot of breath on the word "Volk" for "people." Of coure, Streeck
in German, and that is the German word for "people." Any other overtones "Volk" has acquired in
English are the fault of the English, as English has its own second word, "folk," which German
does not, and so English speakers didn't have to take over the German word and demonize it. They
could have demonized their own word . . . Tooze's pedantry and intellectual sloppiness were quite
startling. I look forward to seeing a rebuttal and maybe counterattack from Streeck in the next
LRB . . .
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)
These are bad news, but the news which are even worse is the fact that of these 18.7 Trillion
of nominal GDP, probably third (most likely more) is a virtual GDP–the result of cooking of books
and of financial and real estate machinations. Trump knows this, I am almost 99% positive, even
99.9%, on that.
This is a very good article. I agree with it almost entirely.
Is it possible for an ideological system to dump one of its core component after learning from
past mistakes?... Could 21st century capitalism dump imperialism? Maybe.
When would it be possible for the anti-imperialist ideological system to dump its core belief
that, Lenin's demented (and unoriginal) ramblings to the contrary, capitalism has intrinsically
zilch to do with imperialism?
Because from now on, this is one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their
internal enemies are far more dangerous than any external foe. When I see rabid maniacs like
David Horowitz declaring himself a supporter of Donald Trump, I get very, very concerned and
I ask myself "what does Horowitz know which I am missing?".
David Horowitz merely demonstrated that, unlike "
renegade Jews " such as the Kristols and the Krauthammers, he is a patriot of his own country
(the USA) first and a Jewish nationalist second. I consider that perfectly fine and worthy of
respect.
" one other thing which Putin and Trump will have in common: their internal enemies are far
more dangerous than any external foe. "
"Make America Great Again"- is just an empty political slogan like bait on a fishing hook that
only dumb fish would be attracted to.
I suggest readers look at an article by Andrew Levine, a very insightful Jewish American political
commentator and regular contributor to Counterpunch.
"the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from
the face of the Earth".
What has ISIS done to America or Trump that he should want to totally obliterate them? Before
you denounce or pronounce me as dumb heretical dissenter, read on.
Sunni Arabs in the Middle East have been exploited and controlled by racially arrogant European
interlopers and colonists since the fall of the Ottomans. They have been especially mistreated
and ravaged by vengeful Americans since 2001. They also facilitated a revival of Shia-Sunni sectarian
conflict in Syria and Iraq. Now the displaced and persecuted Sunni minority want to form their
own state, free from foreign interference to practice their chosen religion and way of life. I
grant you that they are also vengeful and violent to those who persecuted them by using terrorist
methods and that they practiced "ethnic cleansing" but that does not make them "uncivilized",
the civilized Americans and Europeans did the same when conquering their settler colonies. So
why not let them have their own land, just like the Jewish Europeans were given and make peace
with time provided they renounce their goal of spreading Wahhabi Muslim empire by force?
The Arab states which emerged after the dissolution of the Ottoman Caliphate were not meant
to be replaced by an Arab Caliphate. The fight of the Sunnis is not the fight of a 'persecuted'
minority, but of the former dominant minority for the re-establishment of their dominant position
in the frame of the Caliphate, with wet dreams of world domination. ISIS is but the tip of the
iceberg. Their eradication would cool down the overheated minds of the Caliphate dreamers.
The key to US solvency and credit worthiness is the "ratio" of Debt to GDP.....Our GDP should
ALWAYS be in the plus column, and when its not.... it's bad news.
Like today, it is bad news (Debt 19.9 T / GDP 18.7 T)...it is such bad news our big media has
refused to discuss it .....The only person to bring it up , ever, was the Donald.
The big media does not want to say the wars they lied us into bankrupted our nation because it
makes them accountable.
The scaly truth is that they "are" accountable.
Ironically,Donald Trump (who knows this too) now has the power as President to generate over two
trillion dollars in revenues, literally overnight, and move our Debt to GDP ratio right back in
the plus column.
Do you want to know how ?
He goes on record that the Iraq War "lies" constituted a defrauding of the American people , our
country, and the brave men and women who fought and died there....and he has chosen to recognize
this "defrauding " as a supreme terrorist act against the wellbeing of our nation ,our citizenry
and the values that make us who we are.....
He goes on to say that ALL the perpetrators will be held accountable for this despicable act of
deception , so that it may never happen again.
Then he proceeds with operation "Clean Sweep" and takes down all the back room billionaire oligarchs
who jockeyed for the war and profited from it .
Lets say by the time he is done he has arrested 700 belligerent oligarchs and media moguls and
seizes all their assets....If they are each worth, on average, 4 billion dollars .......
then 700 x 4 billion = 2.8 trillion dollars
If this 2.8 trillion goes to paying down the national debt....then "bingo" our Debt to GDP ratio
is right back in the" plus column" ....
Our National debt is reduced by 2.8 T and the GDP stays the same .....the new ratio is 17.1 T
Debt/ 18.7 T GDP.
Our credit worthiness, as a nation, is now out of the" danger zone".
Whatever assets the criminal oligarchs had, are auctioned off and redistributed to all the good
people who would never "lie us into war".
This sends an enormously reassuring message throughout the world that we are able to take care
of business at home, and clean house when necessary.
This would also serve as a much needed tonic within the entire "establishment" community, as they
would be intensely fearful of ever defrauding the American people again.
Would you do it ?.....If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability ?
Would you do it ? ..If you were President, Anna, would you demand accountability
Not to speak for Anna, but maybe I would – if blessed with balls of titanium, or perhaps by
underestimating the capacity of the deep state to slice them off. Being human, one can only hope
that Trump will do what I cannot, or could not in his shoes.
One thing he cannot do is feign ignorance or pretend to be unaware of the critters festering
in the swamp – after all, he campaigned on the promise of draining it. Where hope falters is in
seeing the cabinet he is building with characters unlikely to do much in the swamp-draining department.
Without a strong cadre of testicular fortitude surrounding him in his cabinet, his most sincere
attempts at swamp-drainage will be quixotic at best.
So, where does one place hope lest one becomes a blathering cynic or a nattering nabob of negativity?
Ego -- That is where my chips are stacked. Nothing defines or motivates Trump more than
his self-perception. I believe that it is much more than showmanship that propels his self-promotion,
and nothing would be more devastating to the man than to be ridiculed or perceived as a failure.
I doubt that Netanyahu could do to him what he did to Obama and survive the retaliatory deluge
that would follow. I think Trump's hidden strength is his desire for vengeance against those that
wrong him (I expect there to be tribulations in HRC's future). If the deep state doesn't do him
in first, there is the strong possibility of damage on the deep state – one that they may never
recover from in this world of instant information that wilts night-flowers.
He may redefine victory on occasion for outcomes that are too difficult for him to accept,
but in the end, he will "Make Trump Great Again," and if fortune favors us, help the US benefit
in the process, if not the rest of the world.
That does not rule out that his naiveté may cause him to stumble and fall
Trump 'strongly considering' Michael Flynn pardon,
points at FBI 'conveniently losing' his records
Matthew Walther The failure and delusions of the adults in the room 
Matthew Walther The 2020 Democratic frontrunner is a Republican
The passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has refuted any notion that
Trump's ascension to the White House would mark an end to neoliberalism. Poor whites who
supported Trump expected him to offer America a new version of conservativism that would break
with neoliberalism. Instead, furthering neoliberal policies has become a critical objective
that works in tandem with Trump's xenophobic rhetoric
The protection
of the people of the United States, its homeland and its way of life; 
